The Secretary of State was asked—

Ben Bradshaw: The specific £10 million that we announced last month does not, but English Heritage has agreed funding for the Salisbury and Devizes museums as part of a separate partnership agreement, and the two museums together have received over £500,000 since 1999 as part of the Government's support for regional museums.

Margaret Hodge: I hope that, in co-operation with my hon. Friend—because of his efforts in steering the Bill through Parliament—we shall be able to provide the maximum publicity when the Bill finally receives Royal Assent. I can tell him that Ministers have never turned down any advice from the Spoliation Advisory Committee in the past, and I do not expect that to change in the future.

David Cairns: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on winning—this is long overdue—the Stonewall politician of the year award?
	Knowing this question was coming up, over the weekend I started counting how often products were placed on the television programmes I was watching, which were mainly imported from the United States, and I gave up after counting well over 20 occasions. I am not remotely corrupted by this. We should stop being so prissy, get on with it, and give some money to ITV to make up for the huge drop in advertising revenue it has experienced.

Lindsay Hoyle: Product placement is the way forward. Who knows? We may have something above the Speaker's Chair. This is a welcome move and goes a small way to ensuring that there is programme making within the great Granada region. However, will the Secretary of State do even more—he has touched on this—to make sure that regional news and current affairs programmes will continue to be made within "Granadaland"?

Nigel Evans: Berry's in the Ribble valley make good chairs, Mr. Speaker, if you are thinking of going down the route just mentioned.
	Clearly, we might see the end of Newton and Ridley beer being served at the Rover's Return on "Coronation Street", but we have some very good brews around my constituency—Bowland, Thwaites, Moorhouse's and the like—which could be served there. Does the Secretary of State agree that product placement should not be allowed in news programming, as people want to ensure the neutrality of programmes in that area?

Si�n Simon: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that question. People who have done nothing wrong should not be in any danger of having their internet interfered with at all. Hardly anybody, other than the most serious and egregious recidivistic offenders, should ever be in danger of having any of their internet affected, and nobody will have their bandwidth squeezed or their account suspended until they have had repeated letters, been given a healthy notice period and then had a right of appealindeed, two rights of appealas she requests.

Gerry Sutcliffe: My hon. Friend should say what he means. Clearly, there are issues to address, and the whole purpose of this correspondence and these meetings, and the Burns recommendations in particular, is to do that. Progress has been madethere is now an independent chairman of the FA, which is a step in the right direction, and we have seen support for women's footballbut I believe that more can be done. I am looking forward to raising these issues with these organisations in the very near future.

Margaret Hodge: Ministers and officials regularly receive representations on listing issues, including funding, from a wide range of partners. More than 26.5 million was made available via English Heritage grant schemes in 2008-09 for the repair of listed buildings and other heritage assets.

Patrick Cormack: Bearing in mind that Canterbury, Lincoln and Lichfield cathedrals aloneto name but threeare looking for more than 26.5 million, will the right hon. Lady accept that that is not an enormous sum in the face of the problem? Will she encourage her Treasury colleagues to reconsider allowing private owners to offset the cost of maintenance against tax, freeing more money for public buildings?

Edward Vaizey: Listed buildings are part of our national heritagea national heritage that the Secretary of State described last week in disparaging terms as the past, old buildings and monuments. Does that explain why the Minister's Department has cut funding to English Heritage by 100 million, more than halved lottery funding for heritage and withdrawn the draft Heritage Protection Bill?

Margaret Hodge: Let me talk first about heritage funding. I would have thought that Opposition Members would support the Government as we try to ensure that investment in our heritage goes to supporting the assets rather than the bureaucracy of particular organisations. Although it might be true that English Heritage's funding has kept level over the past few years, the investment in our buildings has increased. We now invest some 600 million per annum in heritage across the piece. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's assertion that there has been a decline in the funding of heritage. Indeed, I look forward to what he will say in his manifesto about the investment that we will have in heritage rather than the cuts that we will have in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and its bodies.
	On the Bill that failed to get time in Parliament, I regret that that happened but I am taking forward a lot of the propositions in it. Earlier, we discussed the Bill on spoliation that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) has successfully piloted through both Houses. We are managing to put other elements of the Bill into effect without the legislation, but we will continue to look for an early legislative opportunity both in this Parliament

Keith Vaz: The Minister will be aware that at midnight a new and violent video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, is to be released. It contains scenes of such brutality that even the manufacturers have put warnings in the game telling people how they can skip particular scenes. Given the recommendations of the Byron review, specifically paragraphs 32 and 33, what steps do the Government propose to take to ensure that such violent games do not fall into the hands of children and young people? This is not about censorshipit is about protecting our children.

Si�n Simon: I meet lottery distributors regularly. The Big Lottery Fund and its predecessors alone have made grants totalling 450 million to community buildings across the UK.

Henry Bellingham: During this week of remembrance, does the Minister agree that a group we should not forget is the one looking after the interests of many veterans, both young and oldnamely, the Royal British Legion? Can he tell the House why numerous British Legion bids to the national lottery for new premises or repairs to existing premises have been turned down?

Gerry Sutcliffe: Under this Government, there has been record investment in school sportmore than 2 billion since 2003. From an estimated one in four young people doing two hours a week of sport in school in 2002, 90 per cent. are now doing two hours, and more than half are doing three hours. We have raised admission to offer every young person five hours per week, with three hours for 16 to 19-year-olds; 32 per cent. already do that amount, and we are making access to regular competitive sport a key part of our proposed new pupil guarantee.

Gerry Sutcliffe: We fund school sport in a variety of ways, including direct funding from Government. The hon. Gentleman will congratulate the Government on the 100 million we are spending on school sport, although he may be embarrassed by the performance of the previous Conservative Government on school sport. I hope he will support all the initiatives that we are taking forward.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I was previously the Minister with responsibility for prisoners and young offenders, so I am pleased that sport is taking place in young offender institutions. I am able now, in the role of Minister for sport, to make sure that a growing number of children participate in school sport. The 16 to 19 age group is difficult but we are making sure, through investment in whole sport plans, that governing bodies tackle those areas where there are difficulties in recruiting people into sport. The good news is that we are offering a diversity of sport. Gone is the stereotyping whereby boys played cricket, football and rugby, and girls played netball and hockey. We are offering many more sports so that young people have alternatives and can have a go at different sports, rather than only the traditional ones, because there are many other things that young people can do.

Gerry Sutcliffe: In the run-up to the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, as part of our legacy promises, we want to create a world-class system of PE and sport for young people in England. We have raised our ambitions to offer every child five hours of high quality PE and sport per week, with three hours for 16 to 19-year-olds. Between 2008 and 2011 we are investing over 780 million through the PE and sport strategy for young people, bringing total Government investment to more than 2.4 billion since 2003.

Gerry Sutcliffe: The Government currently do not provide any financial support to improve or develop professional football club stadiums. However, the football stadia improvement fund, which is funded equally by the premier league and the Football Association and administered by the Football Foundation, has to date invested more than 100 million in 1,099 projects. My Department also sponsors the work of the Football Licensing Authority, which, by working with clubs, local authorities and the emergency services, will help to ensure that our football stadiums are some of the safest in the world.

John Grogan: Will Ministers urge Ofcom to press ahead with remedies for excessive concentration in the pay TV marketBSkyB accounts for 85 per cent. of all subscriptionsand so increase choice, value and competition for TV viewers across the range of cable, satellite and broadband platforms?

Ben Bradshaw: I am sure that Ofcom will have heard the words of my hon. Friend, who has submitted his own representations to its review. It is not up to me to tell Ofcom how to conduct its reviewsit is an independent regulatorbut so far it has conducted them well and speedily, and I expect this one to be no different.

Mark Harper: Rural areas such as mine often have slower broadband speeds than in urban areas, which damages consumers and business. The Secretary of State's solution is a broadband tax. We do not support that, but since he does, can he confirm that the 150 million or so that it will raise each year means that it will take some 20 years to pay for the necessary investment?

Ben Bradshaw: No. The hon. Gentleman is assuming that that will be the only source of funding, but it will be pump-priming. We have come up with the idea of a modest levy which represents a smaller amount than that which people have saved from their fixed lines because of the reductions in bills over recent years, yet his party has come up with absolutely no solutions for funding. It is amazing to me that Conservative Members, who represent rural areas in particularit is the rural areas that will lose out, because the market will not deliver broadband to themhave so far offered no solution. We have a solution; I hope that he will support it.

Ben Bradshaw: I am well aware of, and gratified by, the strong interest in the north-westas in most of the English regions and in Scotland and Walesin the Government's proposals to help to save the very important service of regional news. We hope to proceed with this as soon as possible. We will be going out to tender shortly, and we hope to announce by March the preferred bidders for the English region chosen and for Wales and Scotland.

Ben Bradshaw: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that that issue was discussed in great detail at the time of the last licence fee review. As he will be aware, this Government introduced concessions for TV licences for the elderly, but there was no consensus, in this House or among several different organisations representing different interest groups, on who else should be added to the listso none was added. The time to make those representations is during the next licence review; given what he says, I am sure that he will do that.

Anne Begg: Have my right hon. and hon. Friends had a discussion with STV about the reconfiguration of its news programmes? People are very concerned about that in the north-east of Scotland, particularly in my constituency, where broadcasts are made under what used to be the Grampian licencethe studios are in my constituency. I am concerned that that area of news will be sucked into Glasgow and have a central-belt bias.

Ben Bradshaw: I was in Glasgow last week discussing that very matter with the director of STV, who assured me that its plans for the future would safeguard and build on the local and sub-regional provision to which STV is committed. In order to do that, however, it needs to have a sustainable funding model. That is why it is important that Members in all parts of the House get behind and support our proposals for these regionalor, in the case of Scotland, independently fundednews consortiums to put regional news on a long-term sustainable footing. Without some level of intervention, the market will not sustain it for the long term.

Gerry Sutcliffe: Of course I would love to do thatcongratulations to Kettering. The world-class facilities that we now have up and down the country show that the investment that we have put into sport is coming to fruition. There are world-class facilities not only for elite sport but for community and school sport.

Ben Bradshaw: I would think that that is highly unlikely in practice. As my hon. Friend knows, the film industry alone estimates that it is currently losing 200 million a year because of theft from illegal file sharing. I suggest that the regulatory costs of introducing the legislation will not get anywhere near that amount.

Ben Bradshaw: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. Both our targets1 million extra people becoming physically active and 1 million extra people becoming involved in sportare on target, and we will deliver them.

The Minister for the Olympics was asked

Tessa Jowell: The budget of 9.325 billion that I announced in March 2007 remains unchanged. I publish regular quarterly economic updates, the next being due at the end of November, and I provide regular financial briefings, which are sometimes commercially sensitive, to Opposition spokesmen.

Hugh Robertson: According to the memorandum of understanding signed between the Minister and the previous Mayor in June 2007, the national lottery is due to be repaid once the London Development Agency has recovered its land acquisition and disturbance costs. In that memorandum of understanding, it was explicitly stated that those costs were not expected to exceed 650 million. Is that estimate still accurate?

Tessa Jowell: I know that the hon. Lady has a great interest in the matter of landscaping in the Olympic park, which is progressing well. Land is being prepared for planting, including the installation of drainage and extensive irrigation systems. Last week Her Majesty the Queen planted the first of what will be 2,012 trees in the parka mature willow tree grown in Milton Keynes. In fact, the plants for the park have been sourced from Hampshire, Thetford and Wales. I will shortly announce the result of the great British garden competition run in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society.

Tom Brake: What assessment has the Minister made of the role that volunteers could play in the landscaping of the site? She will be aware that 250,000 people have already volunteered. Will she ensure that they are brought into use as soon as possibleindeed, given those volunteering opportunities immediately?

Tessa Jowell: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is a tremendous enthusiasm for people giving their time as part of the Olympics, not only in London but around the country. We want to ensure that that energy and that will to give time, motivated by the Olympics, is fully utilised in a variety of ways, and we will make announcements about that at the beginning of next year. On his point about involving volunteers in the park, some 20 primary schoolsthe construction crewtake part in such activities. I know that the organising committee and the delivery authority will want to maximise that.

Tessa Jowell: My hon. Friend has a great record in championing tough action against the exploitation [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I apologise for interrupting the Minister. I do not know how detectable it is elsewhere, but within the Chamber there are far too many private conversations taking place [ Interruption. ] Order. I need no help from the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey). To put it bluntly, it is straightforward bad manners for people to witter away from a sedentary position when a question is being asked or answered.

Tessa Jowell: I am very happy to accept my hon. Friend's suggestion of convening a meeting of all interested parties, to ensure both that we take effective action to deal with that potential problem and that men and womenyoung men may be open to exploitation as well as young womenare aware of their rights. The other important thing is to ensure that a clear message goes out to the traffickers that there is no point in coming to London.

Anthony Steen: rose

Chris Grayling: This morning the Home Secretary used the front page of a national newspaper to say that he wanted to start a national debate about immigration. It is a shame that he is not here to start that debate this afternoon.
	More and more evidence is now emerging to suggest that the Government broke freedom of information laws and tried to cover up a deliberate change of policy designed to encourage much higher immigration, very probably for party political purposes.
	Two weeks ago, a former Home Office adviser, Andrew Neather, was widely reported as saying that Ministers had covered up a secret plan to allow in more immigrants and to make Britain more multicultural. When I put those allegations to the Minister, he said, quite extraordinarily, that he had not and that he did
	not know to whom or to which reports the hon. Gentleman refers.
	[ Official Report, House of Commons, 26 October 2009; Vol. 498, c. 7.]
	Let us hope that he can do better today.
	First, there was what was originally a secret plan. Will the Minister confirm that what he was talking about back in 2002 was a relaxation of the rules for clearing immigration applicants so that those who had been waiting more than 12 months would be granted clearance to stay without any further investigation into their cases? Will he also confirm that the head of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate said in an e-mail to the then Minister that that involved
	pragmatic grants, i.e. not pursing every angle which could conceivably justify a refusal,
	and that the policy meant that
	some risks would have to be taken?
	Will he also confirm that Ministers were aware of that policy change and that they accepted that it involved taking risks with immigration applications?
	Then there was the cover-up. Will the Minister confirm that the Home Office tried to withhold documents outlining that policy change from the Information Commissioner? I have copies of those documents, and they are clearly marked withold at the top. Will he also confirm that the Information Commissioner found the Home Office guilty of breaking the law, and ordered the documents marked withhold to be released? Will he tell the House why Ministers broke the laws that this Government had passed?
	The Home Secretary says that he wants a rational debate on immigration, but why on earth does he think anyone will take him seriously in that debate when it is now clear that this Government have set out deliberately to deceive the British people, and have proved utterly incapable of telling them the truth about their policies on immigration.

Mr. Speaker: My understanding is that no personal charge against an individual Minister has been levelled [ Interruption. ] Order. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely entitled to seek a ruling on the matter. The infraction occurs if a Member accuses another Member of misleading the House or of dishonesty to the House. I was listening intently, and I have quite big ears, but I did not hear that.

Phil Woolas: I am very grateful, Mr. Speaker, for your confirmation that that was not the accusation by the Opposition spokesman, who has just, in this House, accused Ministers of breaking the law.
	Perhaps I could address what is clearly the hon. Gentleman's latest political gimmick. He seems to ascribe to Ministers a motive that he had when he made his rather embarrassing gaffe at the Conservative party conference. He has brought before the House this afternoon [ Interruption. ] These are serious accusations.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway) has relatively recently toddled into the Chamber [ Interruption. ]

Richard Ottaway: rose

Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman came in earlier, so be itI am happy to concede the pointbut I am concerned with the issue of substance. I do not want sedentary chuntering of the kind in which he regularly indulges. I do not want to hear that.

Phil Woolas: Let me explain the background to the House. As I said in my answer to the urgent question, the policy issues were dealt with thoroughly and comprehensively by the Sutton inquiry, and are not the subject of the question tabled today. That rather reveals the motive for asking the question. The hon. Gentleman referred to Mr. Neather, the  Evening Standard correspondent, who wrote in that paper on 26 October:
	My views have been twisted out of all recognition.
	That is what Mr. Neather, whom the hon. Gentleman prays in aid, said.
	On the freedom of information request, the serious allegation was that we broke the law. In fact, the instruction from the Information Commissioner was issued on 5 March 2009, and on 9 April, in line with that ruling, we disclosed the informationto little or no comment at the time, if I may say so. That again calls into question the hon. Gentleman's motive in asking this question.
	The plain fact about the policy issue in 2004, which was the subject of debate at the time, is that the then Minister acted entirely honourably. I do not know whether she is in her place now, but hon. Members will recall that my right hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes) acted entirely honourably and took full responsibility for what happened at the time. The backlog legacy programme that was put in place was designed to deal with a backlog that had accumulated not only under this Government; as I said in the House last week, it went back to Willie Whitelaw's time. Once again, we are having to clear this matter up.

Christopher Huhne: We will sustain public consensus behind the value of legal immigration only if controls are effective and illegal immigration is firmly countered. That has clearly not been the case. First, there is clear evidence that immigration policy was to grant applications rather than to refuse them, and to give the benefit of the doubt to the applicanta policy that was never made public or debated in the House. Secondly, throughout this period, the Government did nothing to reinstate the exit checks that the Conservative Administration had begun to abolish. As a result, we have not been able to check whether nearly 2 million people a year who have been issued with short-term visas have left again. That is just a large a relaxation of policy as the decision to lean towards approvals. Given that just 60 per cent. of those leaving this country this year can be identified, will the Minister make an urgent commitment to introducing manual exit checks until the e-borders scheme is complete? Will he also estimate how many short-term visa holders have definitely left the country, and how many have overstayed? Will he commit to managing immigration properly, so that public confidence can be restored?

Phil Woolas: I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee. The answer to his first question is yes. Nothing in the question and answer today in any way affects the veracity of the evidence given to the Select Committee last week. Indeed, the question today is about the allegation that we have broken the law in applying the Freedom of Information Act, and that is something that I absolutely reject. It is a very serious accusation. The policy that I have been asked about today relates to incidents between 2002 and 2004. Regarding the specific answers that my right hon. Friend requested by his deadline of Friday, or a week Friday, I hope that he will forgive me ifhe is not nodding; he will not forgive me. I will do my very best to comply with the request of the Chairman of the Select Committee, as I always do.

Phil Woolas: There is a conflation of two points thereI congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his political imagination, but he is talking about different things. The issue of controversy was over the then A2 applications and how they were dealt with

Phil Woolas: The right hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that he was there; I remember it very well. He extrapolates from that the accusation that there was a political plot. There is no evidence of such a plot; indeed, the Government's Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 was criticised for being too authoritarian on the issue of immigration [Interruption.] Some right hon. and hon. Members in their places today criticised it from that point of view. A good effort is going on to raise a straw man, if I may say so, but as ever with the Opposition party, there is no substance to the policy because there is no policy.

Phil Woolas: Again, that question is about current policy, not about freedom of information. With your agreement, Mr. Speaker, may I say that if Members are concerned as to why we are here five years after the events, the timetable of compliance with the FOI shows the Home Office in very good light indeed. Indeed, I was surprised that I was able to do to comply so quickly; the delays were not down to the Home Office. On the substance of the question, as I hope my hon. Friend knows, the measures put in place to clear the backlog are substantial and, indeed, as I was able to tell the Select Committee, a further 350 extra members of staff are now being deployed. The date to which she refers is the end-date, the date by which we will have cleared all the backlogs. Again, we recognised the problem and took action to address it. The MPs correspondence tracker system, which I will take this opportunity to advertise, is a superb service to Members who currently send 60,000 letters a year to me and my colleagues.

Phil Woolas: The hon. Gentleman has reported back from the Select Committee in a way that does not reflect what I told that Committee. The allegation that immigration officers and entry clearance officers do not have those powers is simply not the case. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that an immigration officer should be able to refuse entry into this countrywithout any reason, when that is the point in guidance and indeed in lawthen let him say so. I would bet that those on my side of the House for one would not wish to see that.

Phil Woolas: I thank the hon. Lady for that question, and I take it that she has read the information that has been disclosed

Phil Woolas: She indicates that she has, in which case she will be able to confirm that the information was checked for all people, as is always the case, against the watch lists. That was said at the time. The Bracebacklog reduction accelerated clearance exerciseoperation, as it was known in 2002-04, replicated guidelines that had been used in the past by Governments of all persuasions. However, I can reassure the hon. Lady on the point that she raises.

Phil Woolas: At the time, the A2 countries were not members. My hon. Friend follows such issues carefully, and he will have noted the statement that I laid before the House last week on extending the restrictions to A2. I note that he welcomes that. I am grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to bring that to your attention, Mr. Speaker [Interruption.] No, I am grateful, because it is a good policy, and I suspect that no one was aware of it before now.

Phil Woolas: One of the pieces of propaganda being put around is that, somehow or other, there was a deliberate Act of Parliament, or policy decision, to expand immigration. As I said a moment ago, the legal framework under which the Government operated in 1997 was the British Nationality Act 1981 brought in by the Conservative party. We introduced the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which strengthened our immigration controls, and some years later reintroduced the very border controls that allow us to control and manage migration and that the Conservative party got rid of in 1994. Will the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell therefore drop his opposition to our electronic border systemthe very system that protects our borders?

Phil Woolas: We are very grateful to the good people of Croydon, which, as the hon. Gentleman says, is our major base. The fact is that the major pieces of legislationthe 1961 Bill that led to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, the Immigration Act 1971 and the British Nationality Act 1981are the framework for immigration in this country, and since 1997 the Government have introduced a number of Bills [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Epson and Ewell is keen on chunneringI think that was your phrase, Mr. Speaker.  [Interruption.] Chuntering. I must be carefulthat is not chumpering, is it? In the debate on the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill, he criticised the Government for introducing too many immigration Bills. Which is it? Is it that we did not have enough immigration Bills, or too many? He must make his mind up.

Phil Woolas: I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman has said.
	The debate on European Union immigration is a debate in which I am more than happy to engage. I am more than happy to justify the benefits gained by the United Kingdom. I am thinking of, for example, the half million British people who live in Spain, the work and study opportunities that we have in the European Union, and the story of migration from European Union countries: migration that has benefited mutually, for instance, Ireland and the United Kingdom, Spain and the United Kingdom, and east Europe and the United Kingdom in the current year, and will no doubt do so in future years. That, however, is a debate from which the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell will run a million miles, because it will open up the question of Europe.

Edward Miliband: With permission, I shall make a statement about the energy national policy statements and our proposals on clean coal.
	In the summer we published the low carbon transition plan, which explained how we would meet our commitments to carbon reduction for 2020 and beyond. New infrastructure is being provided for the coming years, with 20 GW under construction or consented tomore than the amount that will close by 2018but in order to meet our low-carbon energy challenge, and owing to the intermittency of wind, we shall need significantly more generating capacity in the longer term. As our documents explain, over the next 15 years to 2025, one third of that larger future generating capacity must be consented to and built. Given that challenge, the imperative of reform in the planning system is clear.
	The current system is characterised by duplication, with several bodies responsible for different aspects of consent, overlapping responsibilities for politicians and independent decision makers, and delay. Today, to guide the decision making of the new Infrastructure Planning Commission, we are setting out for consultation six draft policy statements on energy, the most important being those on the trinity of fuels of our low-carbon future: renewables, nuclear power and clean fossil fuels. We need all of them in the long term, because the challenge of the low-carbon transition is so significant. We need renewables, which are a home-grown and plentiful source of supply and are already powering 2 million homes in the UK; we need nuclear power, which is a proven, reliable source of low-carbon energy and an important base load in the system; and we need fossil fuelswith carbon capture and storagewhich make possible a flexible peak-load response.
	Last year, offshore wind generation increased by two thirds and onshore wind generation by one quarter. However, we need to increase the rate of progress significantly in order to meet our objective of 30 per cent. of our electricity coming from renewables by 2020. The national policy statement on renewables covers onshore renewables over 50 MW and offshore wind over 100 MW. Other onshore decisions remain with local authorities. The policy statement seeks to strike the right balance between achieving national objectives and avoiding adverse impacts on the local environment and biodiversity. While Government set out the framework in the policy statements, each application will be decided upon by the independent Infrastructure Planning Commission. The IPC will have to take account of regional and local plans drawn up by local authorities, and developers will have to ensure that they have consulted locally before any application is made, with local authorities submitting local impact reports.
	The Infrastructure Planning Commission will make its decisions on the basis of a clear timetable of a year from the acceptance of an application to a decision. That is a crucial change from the system that operated in the past. This system is right for energy security. By meeting our commitments on renewables we can limit the need for gas imports, holding them at 2010 levels for the rest of the decade. It is also the right thing to do for the environment, because there is no bigger threat to our countryside than climate change. But, according to the estimates that we are publishing today, even given our ambitious targets for renewables there will be a need for additional new non-renewable power. We need to use all available low-carbon sources, which is why we were right to end the moratorium on new nuclear power stations in this country last year. In response, energy companies have announced intentions to build 16 GW of new nuclear power. In the spring, we invited comments on the 11 sites that had been nominated for new nuclear, all of which are on or near existing nuclear sites. I can tell the House that 10 of the 11 sites have been judged potentially suitable and have been included in the draft policy statement. The next step will be consultation in the 10 selected sites, as well as nationally. The consultation proposes that the 11th site, Dungeness, not be included in this national policy statement. That is because, following advice from Natural England and others, the Government do not believe that a new nuclear power station can be built there without causing an adverse effect on the integrity of the internationally unique ecosystem.
	Under the habitats directive, we are obliged to consider alternative nuclear sites. An independent study has suggested that threeKingsnorth, Druridge Bay and Owston Ferryare worthy of further consideration. We have concluded, however, that all of them have serious impediments and none of them is credible for deployment by the end of 2025, the period of the policy statement; nor do we believe they are necessary for our plans for new nuclear. Therefore, we have excluded all of them from being potential sites in the draft policy statement.
	On waste management, the Government are satisfied that, on the basis of the science and international experience, effective arrangements to manage and dispose of the waste from new nuclear power stations can be put in place. In addition, today we are opening consultation on the proposed regulatory justification for two different reactor designs.
	New nuclear is right for energy security and climate change, and it will be good for jobs too, creating up to 9,000 jobs to build and operate power stations at each site and helping leading companies to access the international market.
	As well as renewables and nuclear, the third part of our low-carbon future is clean fossil fuels. There is no solution to the problem of climate change either at home or abroad without a solution to the problem of coalcheap and reliable, but the most polluting fuel. Already, 180 million has provisionally been offered from the European budget to assist Hatfield power station to fit carbon capture and storage, and I can confirm that we have received bids from E.ON and Scottish Power for the next stage of the current CCS competition for a post-combustion power station. Early next year, we will allocate the up to 90 million that has been set aside for the bid or bids that will go forward to the detailed design and engineering stage. Our aim is clear: for carbon capture and storage to be ready to be deployed 100 per cent. on all new coal-fired power stations by 2020. We are determined to ensure that, with the right combination of regulation and incentives, we make this happen, so I can confirm that, under our new framework, there will be no new coal-fired power stations without CCS. With immediate effect, in order to gain development consent all new coal plant will have to show that it will demonstrate CCS from the outset on around 400 MW of total output.
	Our plans are based on up to four projects between now and 2020, including up to two post-combustion projects and up to two pre-combustion projects. The pre-combustion demonstration projects are expected to have 100 per cent. CCS on their coal capacity from day one. The post-combustion projects will be expected to retrofit CCS to 100 per cent. of their capacity within five years of 2020. That will be enforced by the Environment Agency, and there will be a review to confirm it by 2018. If we conclude at that time that CCS will not be proven, we believe further regulatory measures will be required to restrict emissions from these plants, such as through an emissions performance standard.
	Even with the right regulation, however, if we leave the funding of CCS simply to private companies, it will not happen in time. To make CCS financially viable, our proposed energy Bill contains powers to introduce the levy to support demonstration that the Chancellor announced in the Budget; and, in response to points made in the consultation, the levy will also be available to support the move to 100 per cent. retrofit of CCS. Taken together, these policies are the most environmentally ambitious set of coal conditions of any country in the world, and they provide the opportunity for Britain to create thousands of jobs in carbon capture and storage throughout our country.
	On coal, nuclear and renewables, the aim of our national policy statements is clear: consistent with the advice of the Committee on Climate Change, we need to be on course for the long-term goal of near-zero carbon emissions from power. In the spring, we will publish further work on the pathway from 2020 to 2050 consistent with this trajectory.
	Alongside the overall policy statement and those for nuclear, renewables, fossil fuels and gas storage, we are also publishing the policy statement for electricity networks. Together, these documents represent a framework for the future of our energy supplies.
	In every areaonshore and offshore wind, and other renewables; nuclear; and clean fossil fuelsthere will be people who wish to oppose specific planning applications. Their voice must be heard in the process, and we believe that it will be. The planning process must ensure that we give consent to the right projects in the right sites. Although of course we need a process that can turn down specific applications, saying no everywhere would not be in the national interest. As a country, we need nuclear, renewables and clean coal for our energy future. They are necessary for security of supply, tackling climate change and the future of our economy. That is why we are reforming the planning system and publishing our statements today. I urge all those in all parts of the House to unite behind these proposals, and I commend this statement to the House.

Greg Clark: What we have heard softly spoken is a declaration of a national emergency for our energy security. The question that the Secretary of State must answer is why did the Government leave it so late? The statement is made necessary by the Government's admission in July that they expect power cuts in 2017that was the first time since the 1970s that a British Government have had to make such a disclosure. The cause of this national emergency has been obvious for many years. Over 12 years, 15 successive Energy Ministersa new one every nine monthshave behaved like the ostrich and stuck their head in the sand rather than face up to the action that was needed to address our energy black hole.
	Will the Secretary of State say whether the Government knew that most of our nuclear power stations would reach the end of their planned life before 2017? Will he tell us whether anyone in his Administration was informed that North sea oil and gas production would peak and fall away? Did anyone tell them that our most polluting coal-fired power stations were about to close? Every one of the measures contained in this statement should have been brought forward 10 years ago, when the Government had the chance to secure the investments that are so desperately needed to keep the lights on, to keep prices down and to cut carbon emissions. So will he answer the question: why did they leave it so late?
	On the planning statements themselves, we support the Government, but does the Secretary of State accept that to give the certainty that investors require they should be endorsed by a full vote of this House, so that they have the democratic legitimacy that will entrench them against future judicial review? We agree with him that it is absolutely right to create a fast-track planning process for large infrastructure projects, with a dedicated secretariat and time-limited decisions, but does he agree that the final decision should be taken not by an unelected, unaccountable official, but by a Secretary of State responsible to this House?
	Nuclear power must be part of a diverse energy mix, provided it is commercially viable, but does the Secretary of State accept that it is now too late for nuclear to come on stream fast enough to replace our current capacity before it shuts down, and that this will increase our dependence on gas imports before 2020? The moratorium was this Government's and they are responsible for that. Why did they leave things so late?
	On coal, will the Secretary of State confirm that the large combustion plant directive will close a third of our coal capacity, and that since it was agreed by the Government in 2001 not a single carbon capture and storage plant has been authorised to replace that capacity? Will he say which countries, in addition to China, Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway and Belgium, have used this delay to overtake Britain in CCS? Will he say whether 2014 is still the date by which any entry into his chaotic CCS competition must be up and running, or will he confirm what the industry tells me, which is that it has been put back yet again? I note that his statement was silent on this. Why did the Government leave it so late on CCS?
	Will the Secretary of State confirm that Germany keeps 100 days' worth of gas in storage and France keeps 120 days' worth, but that Britain has just 15 days' worth of gas storage? Was his colleague Lord Hunt of Kings Heath right when he said that the current measures would increase that by just five hours? Why did the Government leave it so late?
	On renewables, will the Secretary of State confirm that Britain has the lowest proportion of energy coming from renewable sources of any EU country, apart from Malta and Luxembourg? If he intends, once again, to entertain us by blaming the gaping hole in our energy supply on rural district councils, rather than on the void in energy policy, will he say why he his statement proposes no reforms to allow communities to benefit from wind farms? A decade on from the renewables target, will he tell us why he left it so late?
	Britain's consumers and businesses will pay through the nose for the last-minute scramble that the Secretary of State has announced today to cope with the black-outs that he predicted in July. Will he explain, clearly and simply, why the Government have allowed us to get into this state and will he accompany his response with an apology to the British people for 12 years of negligence, for which we are now paying the price?

Edward Miliband: It is hard to know where to start with the hon. Gentleman, and not for the right reasons. In the course of the day, he has managed to show a unique combination of alarmism and complacency. I say that he has shown alarmism because, if he had listened to my statement, he would have heard me say that if we look ahead to 2018 we will replace the 18 GW of infrastructure that is closing with 20 GW of infrastructure. I know that he is interested in the issue of energy unserved, so I direct him to the Redpoint analysis that we are publishing today, which will show him the updated figures as a result of the more recent data we have. I think that will put him right.
	The hon. Gentleman showed both alarmism and complacency because what he did not say was that he wants to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission. We have gone through this process of years of reform, and the business community likes the system and says that it is the right thing to do. We know that it is necessary, as I said in my statement, to make the low-carbon transition, but now the hon. Gentleman comes along and says that he wants to abolish the IPC.
	What do we have from the Conservative party? The Conservatives say that the Secretary of State would set the national policy statements and also decide on the specific applications. What kind of separation of powers is that? It would not only be wrong because it would disrupt a system that is coming into place, and rightly so in my viewit will hasten the low-carbon transition that we needbut wrong in principle, too.
	The hon. Gentleman asked a series of other questions. On carbon capture and storage, we still do not know whether the Conservative party supports the levy that the Chancellor announced in April. My right hon. Friend announced a levy in the Budget in April and the Opposition say that they will fund CCS from the proceeds of the EU emissions trading scheme. For six months, I have told the hon. Gentlemanas the Treasury has told his hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry)that those funds are already accounted for in the national accounts, so it is funny money that the Conservative party wants to use and we still do not know whether it supports our carbon capture and storage levy.
	The truth is that what we heard from the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) is a clear example of why the Conservative party is not fit for government.

Edward Miliband: rose

Edward Miliband: I will try to be brief in reply, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, it pains me to disagree with the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), but let me deal with the three specific points he made. He has an anti-nuclear position. I disagree with it and I shall briefly explain why.
	We have very ambitious targets for renewables in this country. We all know the targets are ambitious, so to askas the hon. Gentleman didwhy we are not more ambitious is, frankly, not realistic. We know that we have tough commitments, but looking at our needs in terms of low-carbon energy in the future, it is wrong to rule out nuclear power, because I think it can make a real difference. As for the hon. Gentleman's point about nuclear not making a contribution, companies have already put forward plansas I said in my statementfor 16 GW of new power, which is significant.
	The hon. Gentleman made some specific points about nuclear. He said that we had not decided about the stations. Actually, we are saying that there is a choice of two stationsthe Westinghouse station or the AREVA station. We shall benefit from the fact that the stations are being built elsewhere, because many of the issues that could be faced will have already been gone through.
	On for coal, let me be absolutely clear: we have said that there will be no new coal without CCS. That is absolutely clear. We are absolutely clear about that [ Interruption. ] The hon. Gentleman says, Expected. No, CCS will have to be demonstrated from the outset in any new coal-fired power station. That is very clear from my statement, and he will see it from the documentation as well.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned democratic oversight, which comes in the national policy statements, but when those statements are put forward by Ministers it is right to leave specific questions about specific applications and developments to an independent body. I think that will give more assurance in the process, and I wish the hon. Gentleman had supported our proposals today.

Several hon. Members: rose

Alan Beith: May I welcome the Secretary of State's well justified refusal to put Druridge Bay in Northumberland back on the list of potential nuclear sites, and, as someone who has campaigned for 20 years ago to get it off that list, assure him that any future Secretary of State who sought to put a nuclear station on such a magnificent and environmentally diverse site will face a similarly intense and successful campaign?

Edward Miliband: Again, I know from speaking to the right hon. Gentleman that he feels strongly about these matters. We made a judgment about Druridge Bay and, indeed, the other two sites identified as worthy of further considerationboth that there were serious impediments to their being placed on the list, and that they were not necessary for our plans for new nuclear. Hence, they have been excluded from the national policy statements. I hope that that acts as reassurance to the right hon. Gentleman and his constituents.

Michael Meacher: As French, Finnish and UK regulators have all recently agreed that the current control systems for the evolutionary EPR reactor are to be subject to architectural changein other words, the reactor is still being designed how can the Government possibly sanction the justification of nuclear plant before reactor design is finally decided? Is that not a classic case of putting the cart before the horse?

Edward Miliband: No, it is not. I said earlier that we were benefiting from the fact that other countries are constructing and using power plantsin the case of both Westinghouse and AREVAbefore they are constructed here. That and the generic design assessment represent precisely the advantage that we in this country have of being able to get the design right, so that we can stick to the timetable and avoid the cost overruns that would otherwise result.

Edward Miliband: The hon. Gentleman has an understandable interest in a particular competitor in the competition, and he will understand that we have to go through a due process before making decisions. I said that early in the new year we will announce the next stage, including the allocation of 90 million, so he will have to wait until then. To be clear about the matter, however, let me say that we are absolutely not downgrading our ambitions on CCS; indeed, we are upgrading them. I have said today that we will have up to four demonstration projects: up to two of them will be post-combustion, and two of them will be pre-combustion.

Edward Miliband: The Wicks report makes very good reading; I am glad to have the chance to plug it, as my right hon. Friend rather modestly did not do so. We showed in the low carbon transition plan that if we make the progress on renewables that we have set outthat is an if because it relies on planning reform, public consent, finance and grid connection, all of which we are acting onthen we will stabilise gas imports at 2010 levels. However, that requires a Government who support the drive to renewables, who do not have qualms about it, and who do not start saying that onshore wind is not part of the energy mix. That is why, in my view, we have to drive ahead with renewables and nuclear.

Edward Miliband: It is worth saying that the IPC will be up and running and fully operational from next spring. Pre-designation of the NPSs, it will be making recommendations to Ministers, and post-designation it will be making the decisions itself. As the hon. Lady will see from the documentation, we have allowed extra time for consultation. We fought long and hard about this. We thought that it was the right thing to do, not least because of the big interest in nuclear, for example. The 15-week consultation period takes us to about February, and then the Select Committee has to deliberate. We want to move as far and as fast as we can by next spring.

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend speaks with great knowledge about these issues. We have set up the office of carbon capture and storage precisely to do what the Office for Nuclear Development has done in our Department, which is to drive this forward on a proper timetable. He is right that we need to make progress. The next stage has been reached today with the bids for the competition, and the so-called feed studiesthe engineering demonstration projectswill be awarded early next year.

Several hon. Members: rose

Steve Webb: The proposed Oldbury B power station, unlike the existing one next to it in my constituency, would have a very high cooling tower. If my constituents objected to that because of the visual impact and other factors, would they actually be listened tonot just heardor would their views be overridden? The document states that the national need for stations is the most important factor.

Paddy Tipping: Should the Copenhagen summit not produce a robust price of carbonthe Secretary of State's plan Awill he look closely at other, domestic measures that will secure the price of carbon and secure new investment in new technology in this country?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend makes a very important point. In drawing up the national policy statements, we are very clear about the need to decarbonise our power supply and take the carbon out of our energy. That is why I emphasised in my statement the importance of the new generating capacity we need by 2025. The truth is that we could carry on producing more gas-fired power stationsthat is a high-carbon lock-in way of proceeding. The real challenge for us is, in my view, not above all a security of supply challenge, because we are making progress in building new infrastructure, but low-carbon security of supplymeaning nuclear, renewables and other low-carbon sources of fuel.

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend raises a very important issue. That is why, in the energy Bill, which was in the draft legislative programme, we want to propose social tariffs on a mandatory basisprecisely to help the hardest-pressed consumers. At a time of rising prices and when pressures on prices are upwards, we need tough regulation, and help for the most vulnerable.

Edward Miliband: We have made clear that on the question of public subsidy for nuclearit was clear in the White Paper produced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton)we are not going to provide public subsidy for the construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear power stations.

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend asks an important question, and there is more information in the documentation we have provided. The truth is that deep geological storage is a long way off, becauseas I said to the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes)waste will stay on the site for many years to come after decommissioning and will then go into deep geological storage. It is also worth saying that several councils in west Cumbria have expressed an interest in being the site for the deep geological storage.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Coroners and Justice Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 26 January and 4 and 23 March 2009 (Coroners and Justice Bill (Programme), Coroners and Justice Bill (Programme) (No. 2) and Coroners and Justice Bill (Programme) (No. 3)):
	 Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration on Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption at this day's sitting.
	2. The proceedings shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table.
	3. The proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.
	
		
			 TABLE 
			  Lords Amendments  Time for conclusion of proceedings 
			 Nos. 1, 2 and 216 One and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments. 
			 No. 55 Three hours after the commencement of those proceedings or the moment of interruption, whichever is earlier. 
			 No. 59, 119, 121, 236 and 239 Five hours after the commencement of those proceedings or the moment of interruption, whichever is earlier. 
			 Nos. 66, 3 to 54, 56 to 58, 60 to 65, 67 to 118, 120, 122 to 215, 217 to 235, 237, 238, 240 to 244 The moment of interruption. 
		
	
	 Subsequent stages
	4. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	5. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement .( Mr.  Heppell .)
	 The House divided: Ayes 282, Noes 213.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Lords amendment 2, and Government motion to disagree.
	Lords amendment 216, and Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
	Lords amendments 112 and 127.
	Lords amendment 128, and Government amendment (a) in lieu.
	Lords amendment 129, and Government amendment (a) in lieu.

Jack Straw: This group of amendments concerns an extremely important issue. It relates to the question of whether an investigation into the cause of death can take place within the coroners system, and in compliance with article 2 of the European convention on human rights, in circumstances involving highly sensitive information, such as intercept material, which cannot be made public. It is only in a very small number of inquestsfewer than 2 per cent. of all inqueststhat the coroner has to sit with a jury. Those are often the most controversial cases, where someone has died potentially at the hands of the state. Of that 2 per cent., there are only a tiny number where article 2 is engaged and there is sensitive material that should not be publicly disclosed.
	I should say right at the beginning that every effort is made by this Governmentand will be by any Government and by law enforcement agenciesto push for the standard coronial system with a jury in this kind of case to ensure that, if humanly possible, it is a normal coroner's inquest with a jury that holds the investigation. There was some suggestion with the de Menezes case that it would not be possible, because of the sensitive material, to hold such an inquest, but in the event it was, as ways round the problems were found. That was to the general approbation of everybodynot least and above all to the families and the community concerned. There is no intention whateverby the agencies, by the police, by the Government, by the Law Officersthat any provisions in this Bill should ever be used as an alternative to a normal inquest where such a normal inquest can, by stretching the envelope as far as possible, be used. Where intercepted evidence is available, every effort is made to gist that material and if the coroner is satisfied that the gist provides a fair summary of the evidence, that is regarded as satisfactory.

Jack Straw: In a sense, my hon. Friend makes my point. There is potential for any tribunalwith a small tto go into camera. In many cases, that provides the answer. For sure, there are long-established rules so that in cases where human intelligence is involved evidence can be given by the staff of the security and intelligence agencies from behind screensor otherwise their identities can be withheld. In most cases, that is satisfactory. There is, however, a tiny number of casesthere is one we know of at the moment; only onefor which the central evidence arises from intercept. There is a grave anxietythis is a central issue in the whole question of the disclosure of interceptthat if that evidence were made available as intercept transcriptions in closed court, it would have to be made available to those present, including many who had not been cleared for these purposes.
	This issue was examined in great detail by the Chilcot inquiry. As I will explain, it came forward with nine conditions in which intercept material in our environment not in other people's environmentscould be made available to the court. I am glad to see in their places today the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), both of whom sat on the Chilcot inquiry and the subsequent advisory panel, so they know a huge amount about this issue.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: This assessment must have been made so will the Secretary of State please tell us how many inquestsshall we say in the last five yearshe estimates would have been affected by this Executive intervention?

Jack Straw: As far as I knowif I am wrong, I will try to correct the record before the debate is concludedthere is one outstanding case, the Azelle Rodney case, which goes back four years. We are dealing with a tiny number of cases, but the problem is that unless we find a way through this problem, there will be no satisfactory investigation into the cause of death in an equivalent case I make no prejudicial remarks about that particular case.
	The original proposals for so-called secret inquests came from my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), when he was Home Secretary. They did not find favour and were withdrawn, as it was the Secretary of State deciding on whether an inquest should be held without a coroner. It was thought inappropriateI understand the arguments and agree with themfor the decision in such a sensitive matter to be made by a Home Secretary alone. After much consideration and discussion, I proposed a different scheme that found its way into clause 12 of the Bill as it left the House: a Home Secretary would form a view that a non-jury inquest was required, and the Lord Chief Justice would nominate a senior judge to hear it, but a prior hearing by that judge would determine, on application by the Secretary of State and on hearing the other parties, whether to accede to that application on clear criteria.

Jack Straw: Section 18 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 also allows the use of intercept evidence in certain cases, but the difference is that in neither scheme was intercept evidence to be made available to a wide variety of parties in the courts, or to a jury. We are not digging inwe never haveand saying that in no circumstances should intercept evidence be available to a court, prior to the Chilcot recommendations being implemented. I was the Home Secretary who introduced, in 1999-2000, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The central issue is how to ensure that such sensitive material, and all the techniques behind it, are protected.
	Everybody who has been in the positionas have I, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe, and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed as a member of the Chilcot committee and the Intelligence and Security Committeeof operating or supervising the system is alive to the dangers and invites others to take on trust the nature of the dangers. I hope that colleagues will accept, from a wide variety of sources, and from right hon. Members who do not necessarily agree on everything, that a serious issue needs to be addressed. If I felt otherwise, I would say so, as would the other right hon. Gentlemen involved.

Jack Straw: I accept that, and in our debates about intercept some people have taken the view that we should just make it available. The Chilcot committee looked in some detail at the systems in other countries, but our system is much more adversarial, and the rules relating to the disclosure of unused material, and the police techniques behind it, are much tougher in most cases than those in other jurisdictions. That is fundamental to the problem that Chilcot was trying to deal with.
	We have to find some way of achieving a solution when there has been a death at the hands of the state and article 2 is involved, as are the requirements that, in every other circumstance, a jury inquest would take place. There can be a satisfactory finding of fact about the cause of death. There is a fundamental difference between such an investigation into a death, and any investigation leading to a criminal trial. In extremisthis has happenedthe prosecution have the discretion to withdraw a prosecution, as they can balance the public interest if they think that they are being required to disclose material that would damage national security. In the context of an inquest or an investigation of a death under article 2, that is not an option, because it is the death that triggers investigation in the circumstances. There is no discretion. The investigation must be held. The only issue before the Houseand it is an important oneis what the environment of that investigation should be.
	When clause 12 failed to find favour, I announced, along with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, that as an alternative he would use the provisions in the Inquiries Act 2005 to establish an inquiry. That had been suggested to us informally as an alternative. Provisions introduced in the other place make it clear that the matters before any such inquiry must be those matters which would have been before any inquest, as an irreducible minimum. There is also provision, in schedule 1, for the inquest itself to be formally adjourned while an inquiry takes place, and general provision for it to be resumed. In some cases it may be decided that there is no need for it, while in other cases it will be resumed.

Jack Straw: Public interest immunity certificates are used to withhold from a jury information that would otherwise be disclosable, but not in a case in which it could lead to an injustice. The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe signed plenty of PIIs, and I signed plenty of them both as Home Secretary and as Foreign Secretary. The difficulty in this instance is that if we leave it to a jury to consider the matteras even those who support the idea, such as Lady Miller and certain interest groups outside, will acceptthe finder of fact, the jury in this case, will be expected to find the facts when some of the key facts are being withheld. Surely that is far less just than allowing a senior judge of High Court status or above to examine the issue.

Dominic Grieve: As I shall make clear in a moment, I am conscious that the Secretary of State has a real problem, and that it is for us in the House to try to help rather than hinder him. Will he confirm, however, that there may already be all sorts of trialsinquests and, indeed, criminal trials that might be helped by the admissibility of intercept evidence?
	Let us be clear about this. The category of case to which the Secretary of State is referring is not a category of case in which intercept evidence might be available that would help but, I assume, a category of case in which intercept evidence goes to the very heart of the decision of an inquest or inquiry. That already narrows it down considerably.

Jack Straw: Yes, it does. Typically, the intelligence agencies or the police have available to them intercept evidence which is highly incriminatory. That is, indeed, the argument in its favour, and the reason for its use in cases abroad. It has been judged to be in the wider public interest not to make it available up to now. Chilcot has come forward with his nine conditions, but on the whole we manage to find other means of ensuring that evidence is found.
	I should just point out to the Housethis is not remotely a theological issuethat it has long been accepted that evidence obtained through recordings, such as hidden microphones, is adducible in court, and that is often used. The point here is that the compromise of techniques is far less. The balance in respect of public interest lies in favour of disclosure. We therefore put forward these proposals, and we sought to strengthen them in the interests of the parties not least by ensuring that a senior judge should be appointed to hold such inquiries.
	A series of amendments were put forward in the other place, which I am inviting the House to reject today. They propose that this evidence should be made available to a normal inquest court, save in certain very limited circumstances where the court has a power to withhold it from the inquest jury. The difficulty here is that under the amendments the coroner could disclose the material to the interested parties even if that could cause very considerable damage to other parties. I say with respect that this is where I identify the central flaw in the argument of Baroness Miller and her supporters, such as Inquest, Liberty and Justice, with whom I have talked and for whom I have great respectand my clause 12 is an attempt to square this circle. Those three supporters have said that
	it will remain possible for a judge conducting an investigation to ban or restrict the jury's or public's access to material that would be contrary to the interests of national security.
	If that is so, we return to the central problem here: in these cases, where the evidence from the intercept is key to the cause of deathbecause if it were not, it would be possible to offer other informationwe are expecting juries to come to a decision based on facts that have not been disclosed to them. Baroness Miller inadvertently made the same admission herself. On Report, she said of the Chilcot inquiry conditions that
	it must be possible for the Government and all their advisers to work out a way to put those nine conditions into the Bill in such a way...that they can stay within the inquest system and the conditions can be fulfilled.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 October 2009; Vol. 713, c. 733.]
	I have two things to say about that. First, some very assiduous and imaginative individualsincluding two in this Houseare sitting on the advisory panel on the implementation of Chilcot, and achieving this end is very difficult. Secondly, I say, with respect to Baroness Miller, that I do not believe that she had read Chilcot's nine conditions. The second of them, for example, says:
	Intercepted material originating from the intelligence agencies shall not be disclosed beyond cleared judges, prosecutors, or special (defence) advocates, except in a form agreed by the originator.
	There are various other restrictions on disclosure, too, so we are back in the same box. In a criminal trial, even where there are PIIs, it is fundamental that the trial judge ensures that there is a fair trial in every circumstance, and if he thinks there will not be a fair trial, including in respect of taking account of material he has seen under the PII, he can abort the trial. I say again that that is not a possibility in an inquest, which is an investigation into a death that has taken place.

David Howarth: Is the Secretary of State saying the following? On the one side, there is some riskalthough presumably a very remote onethat a coronial judge might reveal information to the parties the revelation of which would be damaging to a party, or that a jury that contains people who are not secure might receive certain information. On the other side, there is a risk that sometimes information will not be disclosed to the jury which it would need to make a perfect decision on the facts. Surely the problem is that that is making the best the enemy of the good. There is no perfect solution to this, but surely a system that allows, in general, the disclosure of intercept evidence will, in general, produce the best results.

Jack Straw: The issue of whether and, if so, how intercept evidence can be used in our trial system has exercised senior politicians and senior members of the judiciary for a long time. It is not for the want of trying that we have yet, finally, to pin down a solution. That is the purpose of Chilcot's report and we have got closer to a solution through it than we have ever got before. I am extremely grateful to those who have been burning their brains out on how to ensure that we arrive at the correct solution.
	However, we cannot suddenly say, in a rather blas way, that we are just going to adopt Chilcot's approach for coroners' inquests, without having a proper scheme for every other circumstance. Precisely because of the fact that there is no discretion about whether or not to proceed with an investigation into a death whereas there is that long-stop protection of discontinuing a prosecution in a criminal trial, we have to ensure that the inquests system is more robust than any otherthat is so by definition, because it has to be used in every case where there is a relevant case; there is no alternative but to hold an investigation. That is the point I make. I should say, as I was about to say in a moment, that what I have done, and so my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has to have done, is ask the advisory panel on intercept evidence, which includes hon. Members here, whether they will particularly examine the issue of evidence in coronial matters, because we need to find a specific way forward.
	I wish to illustrate the point some more for the benefit of the House. Amendment 2, which I am proposing to delete, includes a subsection that states:
	A coronial judge shall not order a disclosure...except where the judge is satisfied that the circumstances of the case make the disclosure necessary to enable the matters required to be ascertained by the investigation to be ascertained.
	It does not say, Save where they believe that national security considerations apply. That simply makes my point; if this material is necessary for the finders of factthe juryit will go to the finders of fact. The amendment provides absolutely no protection for national security, notwithstanding the fact that the outside pressure groups have accepted that there should be, as has Baroness Miller, in this kind of throwaway line.

Dominic Grieve: I hope that I am not intervening at the wrong moment, but the Secretary of State may have noticed from the amendments that have been tabled that there appears to be an acceptance by those who have tabled amendments in lieu that the principle of the problem that he identifies about the use of intercept evidence may well be widely accepted across the House. The question then arises: what safeguards can the Government offer that the inquiry process will not be used in a way that would undermine the coronial process and be seen to be unfair? On that, may I simply remind him that in Committee, Lord Kingslandbefore he diedprovided a good steer as to the sort of protections that ought to be in the inquiry process to ensure that it would command confidence? The Government have not adopted all of those. The Secretary of State may comment about this in a moment, but I should say that they might go to the heart of being able to resolve this issue. At the moment, the problem we face is that the situation remains unsatisfactory and that confidence in the inquiry process as it appears in the Bill is not sufficient.

Jack Straw: I have been up hill and down dale on this, as I know others have. I thought that clause 12 was a way of resolving this, because it would have placed in the hands of the senior judge the decision as to whether or not to proceed with a certain investigation, they would then have run the investigation and it would have been within the coronial system. That was parodied as a secret inquest, and we have now gone down the route of an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005. We have sought to ensure that only a senior judge can sit on thisother clear criteria are set down.
	This matter has gone round and round for two years now and I am certainly ready to promise the HouseMembers will have to take it on trust, but there is no reason not to trust methat the inquiry will be used only in exceptional circumstances. The facts speak for themselvesthere is only one extant case in which it is likely to be used, and that is a very rare case. Secondly, I will ensure that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I bring forward a protocol to set out the circumstances in which such an inquiry would take place. They would be very limited, too.
	It might be useful to deal with amendment (a), tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), to Lords amendment 128. It suggests that any appointment by the Lord Chancellor of a senior judge should be made with that judge's consent. First, there could and would be no appointment without the consent of the Lord Chief Justice. It is important that I should say that, and it goes without saying that I have to ask the Lord Chief Justice from time to time to nominate a judge; if he or she were to decide that no judge were to be nominated that would be the end of the matter. That power is quite important. The Lord Chief Justice can speak for himself, but I suggest that he would wish to be satisfied about the conditions under which any inquiry were to take place and about what the level of judicial discretion would be for such an inquiry before he made an appointment.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: rose

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Does my right hon. Friend not understand that it is a question of scale? In any jury system there are always problems with public interest immunitythere always have beenand we get round them by a mixture of evidential routes that has served us extremely well. We now have a problem in one casejust one case in five yearsand to rectify that evidential problem the Government propose to hand a massive new power to the Executive. The disproportionate remedy in the circumstances is obvious to everybody. I know there is judicial oversight, but my right hon. Friend will forgive me for saying that he adulates the higher judiciary only when they are being used as a mechanism to withdraw jury trial. Otherwise, he is rather more critical of them and on occasion has described them both as unelected and unregulated and in various other ways. To say that there is a higher judicial role is not an adequate response. Does my right hon. Friend not understand that that is what concerns most of us in the House?

Jack Straw: My hon. and learned Friend is an infinitely more experienced criminal practitioner than ever I wasI say that seriously, without condescension. However, there is a very big difference. In a criminal case, the trial judge can say, I am not going to proceed, because it would be unjust, or the prosecution can say, We are about to have crucial evidence that is sensitive and compromised. We will withdraw the prosecution, and sometimes does so, because there is no option. But with great respect, there will not be a massive new power in the hands of the state; it would be used extremely sparingly.
	I feel extremely frustrated, because my scheme was to give the decision to a senior High Court judge, but that did not find favour. We tried plan A. That did not work. We tried plan B and that did not work, so now we have plan C. To those who say they do not like the idea of non-jury inquests, I say that I do not like the idea either, but I am trying to square an extraordinarily difficult circle, and I have not yet found a way of doing so except by a route similar to the proposal.

Jack Straw: None of us is comfortable about departing in any case from jury inquests. I hope my hon. Friend will concede that none of us would be going down that route unless we felt that it was absolutely necessary, but as I said, Inquest, Justice and other groups accept that there is material that should be kept from an inquest jury. It may be absolutely central to the case, and the investigation still has to proceed. Baroness Miller accepts that material should be kept back. She referred to the Chilcot criteria, although the withholding would be rather more extensive than she anticipated. In any event, we cannot do it within the scope of the Bill.
	The issue is whether we do or do not come up with a scheme that allows an article 2-compliant investigation to take place, where the finder of fact has access to all the relevant facts. The alternative that has been put to the House is a jury inquest from which material would be withheld, but, I suggest, on unsatisfactory grounds. That is not a way of reaching at the truth for the benefit of the partiesabove all the aggrieved relatives. That is our overwhelming concern.
	In conclusion, I sense from the sombre atmosphere in the House that everybody is addressing themselves to the issue. Even at this late stage, I invite the House to acknowledge that the issues that I have tried to deal with are extremely difficult. They will, I repeat, arise only in rare exceptions. It is in the interest of all of us that those exceptions are kept to a minimum, but occasionally they will arise. The scheme that we propose is a way of achieving justice, not least for the aggrieved parties.

Dominic Grieve: I shall be brief. I repeat what I said: I acknowledge that the Government have a problem. In the other place, amendments were tabled by Baroness Miller. As the Secretary of State knows from my earlier remarks, and as is implicit in the amendments tabled in lieu, there is an acknowledgement that to allow intercept evidence would be very difficult at this stage.
	My party is on the record on countless occasions as wishing to see intercept evidence available in criminal trials and at inquests. That is desirable and it is a shift that needs to take place. I regret that the movement on this is so slow. We subscribed to the Chilcot process so that it could be reviewed, and the Chilcot process is not yet complete. Therefore I acknowledge that to ride a coach and horses through that would be unsatisfactory, even though it is an end that I would wish to see, properly arrived at.
	The question then is how we solve the conundrum. The Secretary of State is right that the Bill has been up hill and down dale. He wanted to have a provision for secret inquests that could hear evidence secretly. He received universal opprobrium for that, partly because it debased the entire coronial system. As he will recollect, when the matter came to be discussed on Report, I suggested to him that it would be better if we called a spade a spade, and if we could not have an inquest in proper form, it would be better to look at the inquiry route, which already existed, as an alternative. At least the Secretary of State or some other Minister would have to explain to the House why an inquest was impossible, answer the hostile questioning of the House and enable Members to express a view, and then and only then, with probably a great deal of public debate surrounding the matter, would an inquiry go ahead.
	It is also true, as I hope I made clear on Report, that when the matter went to the Lords in Committee, Lord Kingsland argued that if an inquiry route were to be pursued where normally an inquest would take place, there were a great many flaws in the inquiry procedure. He tried to rectify that. It was virtually the last speech he ever made. The Government accepted some of what he suggested, including the need for a High Court judge, and some other safeguards concerning the scope of the inquiry. What the Government did not do was to listen to Lord Kingsland's calls that that had to be a judicial process, not an administrative process.
	The Secretary of State highlighted my amendment (a) to amendment 128, and I am the first to accept that it is probably desperately inadequate. The procedures that we have in the House are now so barmythere is no other way to describe themthat I had to draft the amendment even before the Bill had come back from the Lords. All I could do, with the help of the Clerk in charge of the legislation, and with the anxiety that as an amendment in lieu, anything more would probably not be accepted, was to find some way of bringing back to the House the issue of judicial control. Imperfect though the amendment may be, its purpose was simply to give the House the opportunity to say, Perhaps if we have to have an inquiry, there should be a judicial lock on it. Interestingly, that is exactly what the Secretary of State hinted he was minded to grant in the original draft of clause 11(6). I am a little mystified about why he did not pursue the road that Lord Kingsland identified for him, because, if the Secretary of State had, we would not have ended up with the situation that we had in the House of Lords on Report, when everything went in all directions. I hope that I am not being unfair, but the anxiety that their lordships clearly manifested finally expressed itself in allowing intercept evidence.

Jack Straw: I did not intend any criticism of the hon. and learned Gentleman's drafting of his amendment in lieu. As he knows, I spent 18 years in opposition, 17 of them as an Opposition spokesman for one thing or another, and I used to have to draft such amendments. I hope, however, that I have given him a lot of comfortalbeit not in the Billabout the practice, which will be inevitable, in circumstances where there is an appointment. Of course I accept that the noble and much lamented Lord Kingsland was searching constructively for a solution, and we were trying to find one, but it is also fair to say that some who have objected at each stage to what we have tried to do, not including the hon. and learned Gentleman at all, will object in any circumstances to there not being an inquest jury in full possession of the facts. That is the central difficulty with which we are trying to grapple.

Andrew Dismore: I shall speak to the amendments in lieu that are in my name and those of other Members who have signed them on a cross-party basis. I, like the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), accept that there is a problem with intercept evidence, and it needs a comprehensive solution. In trying to table sensible amendments in lieu, I was handicapped by the procedures of the House, which meant that the only possibility was to propose the removal of paragraphs (3) and (8) from schedule 1.
	On 30 April 2005, Azelle Rodney was in the rear seat of a car in Hale lane, Edgware, in my constituency. A police officer fired eight shots at the car, six of which hit Rodney, killing him. There is no evidence that Rodney was holding a gun when he was shot, although the other occupants were successfully prosecuted, firearms having been found in the vehicle. The suggestion was that it was part of a drugs operation, not, I have to say, a national security issue, and that covert surveillance was used.
	The Independent Police Complaints Commission report has not been published, but it recommended no action. Four-and-a-half years on, there has been no inquest and no explanation, and Azelle Rodney's mother, Susan Alexander, wants, needs and has a right to know what happened to her son. So do constituents, because they were made fearful by the incident having taken place in broad daylight at a busy junction. They, too, would like to know what was going on.
	I was pleased when my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary announced that the secret inquest proposals in the Bill were to be dropped, but I am disappointed that they have been replaced by secret inquiries. This debate seems to be something of a Groundhog Day in terms of the issues that we may have to cover. Schedule 1(3), which my amendment would remove, provides for the suspension of inquests
	on the ground that the cause of death is likely to be adequately investigated by an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005.
	However, there are no criteria or grounds for superseding an inquest specified in the Bill. On that basis, the proposals before us are worse than those that were withdrawn for secret inquests.
	Article 2 of the European convention on human rights provides a positive obligation to provide an adequate and effective investigation when individuals are killed as a result of the use of force, particularly where the death is a result of the use of force by state agents. The person conducting the investigation must be independent of those implicated in the events, there has to be a sufficient element of public scrutiny to secure accountability in practice as well as in theory, and the investigation must involve the next of kin to the extent necessary to protect their legitimate interests.
	According to the schedule, the coroner may not suspend the inquest if there is an exceptional reason for not doing so. In an intervention, I asked my right hon. Friend whether, if the investigation was not going to be article 2 compliant, that would justify the coroner's refusal and whether he would uphold the coroner in making that decision. I was given a rather ambivalent answer. If the procedure was going to be article 2 compliant in the first place, one would not need to use the provisionit is only the implication that something would be missing from the inquest that puts matters in the article 2 questionability arena. If the coroner considers that it is an exceptional circumstance, then presumably he should be able to refuse the request. I canvassed this issue in correspondence on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights with my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, who was then Minister of State at the Department for Constitutional Affairs. She replied on 22 January 2007:
	the Government does consider that a reasonable belief that the inquiry proposed by the Lord Chancellor would not meet Article 2 requirements because of its scope, would be an exceptional reason which would justify a coroner's refusal to suspend an investigation.

Jack Straw: I am listening to my hon. Friend with care. Aside from the inadvertent impact that the amendments would have, although I understand the problems about drafting, how would he propose to address the central question at issue, which is how one would deal with highly sensitive intercept material where some of the facts of the interceptthe techniques behind it, as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) put itshould not, for very good reasons, be disclosed to the inquest jury?

Jack Straw: I am sorry, but I must press my hon. Friend. He is coming to some clear conclusions about one option, on the basis of the Rodney case, but the moment I put to him the heart of the issue, he says that we do not know enough about it, although we have to make a decision about it in the next week. I suggest that he is moving away from the central issue. Whenever I put it to him, This is the heart of the issuewhat would you do?, he says that it would not arise very often. It does indeed not arise very oftenit is very rarebut when it does, what would he do?

Jennifer Willott: So far there has been only one case to which this relatesthe one that the hon. Gentleman mentioned involving his constituentand people have had to find their way through the system to be able to hold inquests in all the other cases. Does he share my concern that if there were an opt-out, we might find that under these proposals a larger number of cases were being held in secret?

Andrew Dismore: That is a real fear. My right hon. Friend rightly said that the de Menezes case was dealt with under the inquest procedure. That is because there was no other way of dealing with it. If these arrangements had been available, perhaps the de Menezes case might not have seen the light of day in the same way similarly with the Dyson case, which dealt with depleted uranium victims from the first Gulf war, or the Mubarak case, where the Government resisted tooth and nail proper inquiries into the death of that young man in Feltham young offenders institution.

Frank Dobson: My hon. Friend is a lawyer and understands these things rather better than I do. Does he share the concern and puzzlement of quite a few people that in the de Menezes case, where some of the evidence was clearly related to national security, the existing law worked, whereas in the Azelle Rodney case, where we are told that national security is not at stake, we are also told that there is something so deadly secret that it cannot be disclosed? We should bear it in mind that we were told, not on the Floor of the House but by Ministers, that there was no chance of an inquest in the de Menezes case unless we changed the lawbut we did not change the law, there was an inquest, and it was carried out quite satisfactorily.

Andrew Dismore: My right hon. Friend makes his point. The Rodney case was a police operation to try to bust a drug gang. It was a very dangerous gang by the sound of itfirearms were involvedbut it was not an issue of national security in terms of intercept evidence.
	Given the way that the Bill is currently phrased, there will be secret inquiries at the behest of the Executive. The Executive will set the terms of reference, the Minister will choose the judge, the Minister or the judge can restrict attendance at the inquest, the Minister or the judge can restrict the disclosure or publication of evidence or documents, the Minister can redact reports and recommendations at the end of the inquiry, and the Minister can suspend the inquiry merely on the grounds that it is in the public interest to do so. That is far more broad and generous to the Secretary of State and to Ministers than the original super-inquest proposals were. That is why I am worried that there are no safeguards in the Bill that deal with this issue.
	Similarly, if the inquest is resumed after the inquiry, the findings of the inquest are not allowed to be inconsistent with the outcome of the public inquiry, even if the jury comes to that conclusion. So if a judge is conducting a public inquiry and the inquest is later resumed at the behest of the coroner, the jury is not allowed to make a certain finding even if that is where the facts take it. Secret inquests are being replaced by the prospect of secret inquiries, which will not be adequate and effective investigations. They will not be independent or provide public scrutiny, and they will not involve the next of kin in the way that they should.
	In the 16th report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, we particularly considered the use of the 2005 Act and came to the conclusion that
	any Inquiries Act 2005 inquiry specifically designed to circumvent an inquest, in order to meet the Government's concerns about disclosure of sensitive information would raise the same or similar issues as Clauses 11-12
	the inquest provisions
	about the independence and effectiveness of that inquiry for the purposes of Article 2.
	The current proposals will not give closure to relatives or create public confidence that lessons have been learned.
	Are families expected to take seriously a secret inquiry chair's findings as to what happened to their loved one? It is sometimes difficult enough under the existing open arrangement to convince them that justice has been done. Are the public expected to accept the findings of a secret inquiry? We have seen the reaction that there has been to recent inquiriesthe public have simply said that they have been whitewashes. That would happen particularly if reports were redacted and the family and pubic excluded from hearings or from seeing documentary or other evidence. The secret inquiries will cover exactly the sort of cases that should be held in the openthose in which the state is potentially implicated and independence is essential.
	Amendment (a) in lieu is a consequential amendment to allow for the suspension of a normal inquiry, for example into a big rail accident, in which there will be none of the implications that I have mentioned. The proposals in the Bill cannot be allowed to become part of our law. We have to provide a proper, article 2 compliant process for relatives and the public.

David Howarth: I shall deal first with the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), which I support, and then with the Government motion to disagree to the Lords amendment introduced by my noble Friend Baroness Miller.
	I have tried to emphasise throughout the debates on this part of the Bill that the question is not whether there are circumstances in which certain things have to be heard out of the public gazefor example, when important matters of national security arise in the course of a coronial investigationbut whether there should be a jury in important cases of deaths at the hands of state officials. That is the central question, and it is why the hon. Gentleman has to be right that it is no solution at all to move from a proposal to have inquests without a jury to one to have inquiries without a jury. That is just as bad, and as he pointed out, it is worse in many respects.
	The key is public confidence. How can the public be confident when someone has died at the hands of a state officiala police officer, a prison officer or an officer of one of the security servicesif the investigation into their death is carried out by someone chosen by the Government, with terms of reference chosen by the Government, and in circumstances in which, as he said, the process can be suspended by the Government? The Government could also determine the terms of the final report to some extent. The independence of such an inquiry would be suspect from the start, and the public would have no confidence in it.

David Howarth: That is the type of case I had in mind. If right hon. and hon. Members have different examples in mind, perhaps they should mention them.
	I believe that for the most part, the Government are taking comfort in an illusion. The comfort that they believe they feel does not really exist, because coronial cases and criminal trial cases are much closer than they imagine. In the end, it comes down to their distrust of the jury as an institution. They keep asking themselves, Who are these people? Where do they come from? We don't know who they are. We didn't choose them. We don't control them. Yes, but that is the whole point of a jury and it is where the public confidence in using a jury comes fromit is not made up of people under the control of the authorities. The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hendon are important because they would re-establish that principle.
	The question is one of balancing risks and what the reality is of the risks that the Government keep putting forward. They keeping giving worst-case scenarios and presenting them as though they were inevitable and would happen on many occasions. Of course, they also say, These things very rarely happen, so it does not strike me as an enormous risk. However, on the other side there is a risk that provisions such as those in the Bill will be used in other cases in which a jury has been used in the past. That is precisely what the debate about the Menezes case is aboutthe availability of such provisions and their use much more broadly than the single case to which the Government have pointed throughout the debate.

David Howarth: In what I have said so far, I have spoken solely about the proposal of the hon. Member for Hendon, without considering the wiretap point, to which I will come separately. Both situations involve the same sort of judgment, although different levels of risk might be involved, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman says.
	I can understand the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) about waiting for Chilcott, and the Secretary of State's argument that we cannot just insert the Chilcott criteria into the Bill; in fact, that probably would not produce the result that my noble Friend was looking for. However, some of the things I have been hearing about the legal objections to which Chilcott referred elliptically in his last report do not make any sense to me. If there are human rights objections or any sort of objections to schemes of partial disclosure, how much more do they apply to schemes of no disclosure at all? That is the argument I have been unable to follow throughout the entire debate.
	I also cannot understand why anyone on the Government side, as the Secretary of State has rightly acknowledged, says that we must wait for Chilcott, because the original version of clause 13 included a scheme that would allow an inquestadmittedly a juryless inquestto hear wiretap evidence. There are other examples of wiretap evidence being used by various tribunalsfor example, in control order and financial restriction proceedingsso the Government have not waited for Chilcott and have done those things already.
	This issue comes down to not trusting jurorsand, by the way, not trusting coroners. The idea is that there is some security risk specifically in the coroner's court and in the jury. The problems one hears about, such as fishing expeditions and certain information coming out if some forms of wiretap were admissible, already apply in the cases where wiretap evidence is already admissible, and would also apply under the original clause 13. It comes down to whether the Government are right to distrust the jury in the coroner's court so much, and whether the risks arising simply from the jury are worth taking. The Government have not yet proved their case on that. How do we know that juries are so unreliable?
	My view is that the House should support the amendments put forward by the hon. Member for Hendon. I do not want to take up the House's time with a Division on the Government motion to disagree, because we have already heard that the official Opposition will not be opposing it, so there is no chance of defeating the Government. However, there is a serious chance of defeating them on the hon. Gentleman's amendments, and I urge all my right hon. and hon. Friends to support those amendments in a few moments.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I will be very briefbriefer than I would otherwise beone reason being that like many Members of the House, I would like to hear the views of the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), if, indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you were minded to call him at any stage. In that hope, I will be as brief as I can be.
	I am grateful to be able to make a contribution in order to deal with what is a grotesquely overstated problem on the part of the Government. My good and right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has always been a master at creating theoretical, if not to say theological, problems with which he is able to torment Labour Back Benchershe has had a good go at my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore)and at trying to get them to sort out such problems. The plain fact is that by the Secretary of State's own admission, the problem that this draconian measure seeks to remedy either does not exist or is so infinitesimally small that it would be a grotesque misuse of the House's power to hand the Executive such a very large extension of their powers.
	May I explain why? Juries know all about covert, intercept, intelligence-based evidence. Let us take for the moment the example of juries in criminal trials. If a jury sits down and hears that a massive police operation nipped a huge bank robbery in the bud, they know perfectly well that covert information and intelligence was behind it, unless they are barking mad and come to the conclusion that the entire flying squad happened to be assembled at that particular point. Of course, if that arrangement is successful, there is no problem. The problem does not arise, and we do not have to worry about public interest immunity in a criminal court if there is a successful operation and people are caught red-handed.
	It is exactly the same with a coroner's inquest. If somebody has been shot by agents of the state because they were believed to be a terrorist, there is no problem if it turns out that the person is a terrorist who was carrying bombs or was in the process of plotting. Such problems do not exist. Coroners will not be asked to investigate that kind of evidence. The problem happens when something goes terribly and demonstrably wrong, which is why it is so rare.
	However, when something goes that wrong, and when something goes as wrong as it did the Jean Charles de Menezes case, there must be a public inquiry. Having a private, secret inquiry in those circumstances would be a devastating indictment of our system and of the use of Executive power. Despite the engaging way in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State talks about judicial oversight and superior judgesas I said in an intervention, it is always nice to hear him adulating superior judges on the occasion that he wishes to enlist their assistance in taking over jury trialthe measure is no counterweight or counterbalance to a jury sitting in an open inquiry, listening to how something has gone terribly and demonstrably wrong at the behest of the Executive.
	My right hon. Friend says that the power will be exercised only rarely, but we have heard that before on many occasionsI am going to stop in a moment to give the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe a decent reinsuch as when the House debated giving up jury trial in tampering cases. It was said in this House and in the other place that it would only happen in the rarest of cases, and only when the defence had been heard in full on the basis of all the evidence. That has simply not happened. There are two cases now in which the defence has simply not been informed of the reason why jury trial has been denied.
	My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State may believe that it will happen rarely or will never be used, but the power that we would be giving to the Executive should never be given by this House, unless we were told in the clearest possible terms that to do so was a grave and immediate necessity. No one has made that case today, and in those circumstances I will take great pleasure in supporting the ingenious amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). I could not get it past the Vote Office, but it is a brilliant idea.

Michael Howard: I must first correct the Secretary of State. He said that I was a member of the Chilcot committee, but I was not a member of the original committee. The Conservative representative on that committee was Lord Hurd of Westwell, and I took his place when the committee changed its responsibility and began to supervise the work of the officials in the Home Office who have sought a way to meet the nine tests set out by the original committee. Although we have not yet achieved the objective of finding a scheme that meets those tests, those officials have been carrying out their work thoroughly and conscientiously in their attempt to meet that objective.
	I decided that I should contribute to this debate because of my membership of the committee and I am therefore primarily concerned with the question of the admissibility of intercept evidence. Until the contribution by the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), it looked as if I need not trouble the House with my contribution, becausein sharp contrast to what happened in the other placethere seemed to be a splendid degree of consensus this evening on this subject. Indeed, until this happy consensus descended on the House, I thought at one point that I would be in the very unfamiliar position of voting with the Government against my own party. Happily, that will not be necessary.
	It is worth setting out the history of the matter, partly to excuse the fact that my contribution lacks all novelty. I am here to repeat the arguments that I put before the House on the Second Reading of the Counter-Terrorism Bill on 10 June 2008 and the Second Reading of this Bill on 23 March this year. After I made my intervention on the former, the provisions that would have made intercept evidence admissible at coroners' inquests were removed from the Bill. I do not lay claim to a causal connection between my intervention and the removal of the provisions: I merely set out the facts. I was therefore somewhat surprised when this Bill appeared and those provisions reappeared. Once again, I voiced my opposition on Second Reading, and once againthis time at Committee stage in the other placethe Government removed them from the Bill, and I was happy to see that. It is noteworthy that on that occasion they were removed from the Bill without a Division.
	It therefore came as an even greater surprise that, on Report in the other place, those amendments designed to provide for the admissibility of intercept evidence were put back into the Bill, this time against the wishes of the Government but at the behest of both the principal Opposition parties in the other place. I am especially grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) for accepting the Government's view that to put those provisions in this Bill would have damaging and profound consequences for our intercept regime, which makes it unnecessary for me to take the very unfamiliar position of supporting the Government in the Lobby this evening.
	It is important that the House understands that I do not take this position because I object in principle to the admissibility of intercept evidence. On the contrary, I have made it clear on numerous occasions, both in the House and outside, that I would very much like to see provision made for intercept material to be admitted in evidence, especially in cases of those accused of terrorism and other serious criminal offences. But things are not as simple as that. They are certainly not as simple as was suggested by the hon. Member for Cambridge.
	The work that has been carried out by the officials in the Home Office, and which has been supervised by the Chilcot committee in its present form, has been exhaustive, and it continues. The nine tests that were set out by the original Chilcot committee were necessary if we were to protect a capability of the greatest importance in keeping the people of our country safe. It is one of the frustrating things about the argument that one cannot go very far into the details of justifying the need for those tests without getting perilously close to putting the capability at risk. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who sits on the committee with me, would agree, although I must point out that I do not speak for the committee. It would be foolhardy to retain in the Bill the provisions that were inserted on Report in the other place. They do not meet the tests of the original Chilcot committee and, if they were to remain in the Bill, they would be a risk to this country's strategic intelligence capability that no responsible Government should take.

Jack Straw: With the leave of the House, I wish to reply to the debate.
	I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) for his remarks. I wondered how he would conclude, because I understand his discomfort in abstaining or not supporting those on his Front Bench. He went in for some wonderful casuistry to move from the position that he had adopted to the position that he now supports.
	I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and others who spoke that I am glad that there is a profound difference between the view of this House and that of the other place. The view from all parts of this Housemy hon. Friend added his name to my amendment to delete the additional provisions put forward by Baroness Miller in the other placeis that everybody accepts that there have to be circumstances where intercept evidence is kept from a jury hearing an inquest, so that at least is progress.
	Then we hear suggestions that there are ways round that. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) say, Well, we can do it through the existing measures. We have been through that. There are some casesI assure my hon. Friend that they are indeed few and far betweenwhere having a jury trial will result in an injustice, because there will be key evidence that cannot go before the jury as a finder of fact. With respect, where he is wrong is in suggesting that an inquiry headed by a senior judge would not be article 2 compliant. What would not be article 2 compliant in those circumstances would be the inquest jury, which would not be able to conduct a proper examination.
	There is another important point that I would make to the House, as the Opposition, as well as my hon. Friends, need to apply themselves to that which they seek to vote on in a moment, although I would advise my hon. Friends not to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon proposes that we delete paragraphs 3 and 8 of schedule 1. Paragraph 3 allows for a suspension of an inquest where there is an inquiry appointed under the Inquiries Act 2005 and where a judge has been appointed to hear that inquiry. I have already made it clear that in practiceI am happy to put this on the record again, and everybody who knows the practice knows this to be truethere could be no such appointment without the consent of the Lord Chief Justice, and his consent would be forthcoming only where he was satisfied about the circumstances and the discretion available to the learned judge. Those undertakings are absolutely clear.
	I should also make it clear that if we were to pass the proposed amendments, that would not result in there being no inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005. Rather, it would simply result in an inquest, which could not hear the evidence, running in parallel with an investigation that could hear the evidence. I suggest that that is the worst of all possible worlds [ Interruption . ] I am being told to keep speaking. I am always happy to keep speaking. Although I appreciate his motives, I would ask my hon. Friend to appreciate what exactly he is proposing. He would end up with a muddle, where there would still be a requirement
	 One and a half hours having elapsed since the commencement of proceedings on consideration of Lords amendments, the debate was interrupted (Programme Order, this day).
	 The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83F), That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.
	 Question agreed to.
	 Lords amendment 1 accordingly disagreed to.
	 The Deputy Speaker then put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83F).
	 Lords amendment 2 disagreed to.
	 Lords amendment 216 disagreed to.

Jack Straw: Provided that the House understands that I shall vote against it.
	 Amendment (a) proposed in lieu of Lords amendments 1, 2 and 216.( Mr. Straw .)

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 55.

Claire Ward: The Government cannot accept the amendment passed in the other place to remove the sexual infidelity exclusion in the new partial defence of loss of control. The history of the partial defence of provocation has led to a commonly held belief that this defence can be abused by men who kill their wives out of sexual jealousy [ Interruption. ]

Douglas Hogg: The Minister is slightly misunderstanding my point, and that might be my responsibility. The point that I am making is that the Law Commission did noteither in its final report or in its consultation documentsuggest that sexual infidelity should be excluded from the classes of case that were capable of amounting to provocation.

Dominic Grieve: This is not just my view. Perhaps the Minister would like to be candid with the House about what the Law Commission was advising the Government, even up to a few weeks ago, on the coherence of their proposals. My understanding is that the Government have received the clearest, most unequivocal advice from the Law Commission that this particular proposalwhich was never in the commission's proposalsis nonsense.

Claire Ward: The Law Commission has said that such cases should not be left to the jury. Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman would like to refer to page 65, paragraph 3.143. Now perhaps I can move on

Claire Ward: Of the Law Commission report. Now perhaps I can move on

Dominic Grieve: The Minister knows that the Law Commission's original proposals were cherry-picked by the Government. They decided not to adopt the commission's proposals for the categories of murder 1 and murder 2. I say again to the Minister that my understanding is that, at a meeting that took placecertainly not under Chatham House rulesbetween the Government, their advisers and the Opposition in the Lords, the representative of the Law Commission publicly urged the Government to desist from this course of action.

Several hon. Members: rose

Claire Ward: I will take some more interventions in a few moments, but I want to proceed a little further.
	The sexual infidelity exclusion applies in relation to the words and conduct limb of the new partial defence to murder of loss of control. For that limb of the partial defence to succeed, the defendant must persuade the jury of the following: that he or she killed, or was a party to killing another as a result of losing their self-control; that this loss of self-control was triggered by a thing or things done or saidor perhaps boththat, first, constituted circumstances of an extremely grave character and, secondly, caused them to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged. Finally, the defendant must show that a person of their sex and age with a normal degree of tolerance and self-restraint and in their circumstances might have reacted in the same or in a similar way to the defendant.
	This is a purposely high threshold designed to narrow the circumstances in which a partial defence to murder can be made out based on anger. However, in order to put the matter beyond any doubt, the Bill as introduced in this House also made specific provision that in assessing whether the things said or done constituted a trigger for loss of self-control, the fact that a thing done or said constituted sexual infidelity is to be disregarded by the jury.

Ann Widdecombe: I am grateful to the hon. Lady who has given way very generously. I am not a lawyer, so perhaps we can put this into terms that a layman can understand. The difference between murder and manslaughter is essentially the difference between premeditation and instantaneous reaction. If a man or woman comes home and finds her spouse in flagrante and loses control on the spotnot having premeditated finding such a thingand hits the spouse over the head with a saucepan, which, instead of merely silencing, kills that spouse, most rational people would say that that was manslaughter, not murder. If we are completely to disregard the sexual infidelity in that situation, it removes a defence that would be reasonable in all other circumstances.

Claire Ward: I think that a very important principle is at stake here: whether or not this House believesit has already put its views on this matter on the recordthat when a person commits sexual infidelity they in some sense bring upon their own death at the hands of their partner, husband or wife. That surely cannot be the way in which we should proceed. The reality is that in many court cases, it was decided that that was not an appropriate partial defence, so we wish to make it absolutely clear in the Bill that it cannot be a partial defence in those circumstances.

Anne Main: Does not the Minister accept that the sexual bond between two people gives them a greater closeness and involvement than with any other people in their lives, which is why people would use this as a pleabecause the betrayal is so much greater and the anger may be so much more than in any other situation?

Claire Ward: I do not for a moment deny that passions will be incredibly high when such personal relationships are under pressure in the circumstances that many Members are describing, but surely the hon. Lady would agree that this House and our legislation should not say that dealing with such matters in such a violent way is acceptable. It is not and cannot be acceptableand we want to make it perfectly clear in the legislation that it is unacceptable.

David Winnick: At a time when we are very concerned about so-called honour killings, which in no way involve honour, is it not very important that this House should send out a perfectly clear message, as my hon. Friend has said, that sexual infidelity can never be an excuseno matter what the links in a marriage or partnership, as described by the hon. Member for St. Albans (Anne Main)for what is, after all, murder?

Jeremy Wright: rose

Several hon. Members: rose

Claire Ward: I want to make some progress and deal with a couple of other issues that have been raised in the debate.
	The core argument against this provision, as put forward in the other place, centred on the notion that the Government were not prepared to trust the common sense of the jury. I believe that that is essentially the argument put by the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield. That argument is simply misplaced. The provision does not reflect a lack of trust in the jury; what it does reflect is the Government's determination to ensure that the law in this matter keeps pace with the times. In this day and age, it should not be possible for any person, regardless of gender or sexuality, to stand up in court and blame their partnerlet us not forget that it is the partner that they themselves have killedfor having brought on their own death by having had an affair.

Claire Ward: I am going to make some progress; I will come back to the hon. and learned Gentleman.
	In modernising the law in this matter, we have purposely set a very high threshold for the circumstances in which killing in anger could ever be treated as manslaughter rather than murder. The words and conduct limb of the partial defence is the main plank for achieving this, but we also believe that in relation to sexual infidelity, it is important to set out the position precisely and uncompromisinglynamely that sexual infidelity is not the kind of thing done that is ever sufficient on its own to found a successful plea of loss of control so as to reduce the verdict from murder to manslaughter.
	I want to express one or two concerns about the amendment in lieu proposed by the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth). There may not be sufficient time at the end of the debateI hope there will beso I will say a few words about it now. I think I should be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for an amendment in which I believe he is trying to find an alternative form of words to achieve the Government's purposes in clause 45. However, the way in which the amendment is drafted is unacceptable, for two reasons. First, the amendment restricts the possible motives to three: punishment, sexual jealousy, or sexual envy. Therefore, in cases where sexual infidelity is involved, if the defendant argued that the action he or she took was due not to one of those motives, but to betrayal, breach of honour, or outrage to morality or decency, they could rely on the partial defence. Therefore, if the intention behind the hon. Gentleman's amendment is what I would hope it to be, it has a loophole.
	Secondly, the terms of the amendment are drafted too widely: punishing a person for any act perceived as sexual infidelity would not qualify for the partial defence. The Government's amendment would ensure that a partial defence could be used, for example, in the extremely grave circumstances in which a woman killed her husband after she came home and found him raping her child. However, under the hon. Gentleman's amendment, if the act was perceived as sexual infidelity, even though that might not have been the main consideration in the loss of control, its existence would exclude reliance on the partial defence.

Claire Ward: That is not what I am saying. There are circumstancesthe prime example is of a wife seeing her husband having sex with their child or a stepchildin which sexual infidelity has taken place, but that would not be the primary issue on which the defence would, or could, rely under our legislation. They would rely on the extremely grave set of circumstances of the abuse of that child.

Claire Ward: The example does work, because the hon. Gentleman's amendment would still allow sexual infidelity to be used as a partial defence.  [Interruption.] Having looked at the matter carefully, I am afraid that that is the case. Under the amendment as drafted, the moment that a person perceived that sexual infidelity had taken placeas they would if they saw their husband have sex with their childthey would rely on that defence. That would not be an acceptable defence, but there would be an acceptable defence on the grounds of those extremely grave circumstances of sex with a child.

Claire Ward: The circumstances are quite different. Perhaps the right hon. Lady is suggesting that when somebody sees their husband or wife having an affair, that would be a partial defence for committing extreme violencekilling somebody. The right hon. Lady is clearly not in a position to be convinced, but the Government are clear that that cannot be an acceptable partial defence. Although many juries might disagree, there have been examples in the past in which a court has considered that sexual infidelity was a sufficient provocation to allow murder to be reduced to manslaughter. That is unacceptable.
	I have been on my feet for nearly half an hour, and I want to ensure that hon. Members have an opportunity to speak in the debate. If the right hon. Lady has more to say, she will be able to do so if I finish my speech quickly. I hope that the hon. Member for Cambridge will see the flaws in his amendment, in relation to restricting and disregarding sexual infidelity as a partial defence. However, I look forward to listening to his argument for his amendment.

Dominic Grieve: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	The first problem is that this is the first opportunity that we have had to consider the matter on the Floor of the House. It is a scandal that our procedures are so rotten, hopeless and archaic that, despite the Government's so-called modernisation, we were deprived of giving the matter any scrutiny before it went to the other place. From that, in my judgment, stems a great deal of the difficulty that we are experiencing.
	The second problem is that the Minister's arguments this evening are utterly incoherent. Having practised in the courts, I am the first to accept that the vast majority of the partial defences advanced to the wicked act of killing another human being are largely untenable. Every day of the week in our courts, those arguments are trotted out and correctly rejected by juries. I have never been left in any doubt that juries are able to make up their own minds as to what reasonably constitutes the partial defence that may reduce murder to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation, and they have to do it all the time.
	For reasons that I find most peculiar, the Government have decided that thousands of years of human history and experience should be jettisoned for a piece of political correctness and proclamation: a declaratory statement that sexual infidelity can never justify violent behaviour. The Minister decided to pick some examples, but in doing so she started to undermine her case very quickly. Most reasonable people might have no difficulty concluding that the fact that one's partner is sexually unfaithful would not in itself constitute a ground on which anybody should raise a finger against them. However, human nature, and the nature of sexual relationships, shows that, unfortunately, that happens very frequently. Juries have to apply their mind to that, and in my experience they will tend very quickly to put things in different categories. They will take account of the circumstances in order to establish the extent to which a person has been deceived, the extent to which a person has been treated badly, or the extent to which general tenets relating to the reasonable humane behaviour that we owe each other have been violated.
	The Minister said that if someone came home and found his or her partner was being sexually unfaithful with a child, that would not matter. What about the circumstances in which someone came home and found that his or her partner was being sexually unfaithful with a sibling, or a parent? Those things could happen, but they would not constitute a breach of the criminal law, unlike the Minister's example involving a child. I suggest to the Minister that all those examples are of a kind that might lead a jury, particularly if there are other circumstances that merit consideration, to  [Interruption.] The Minister says that that would be incest, but if a sibling were involved and both parties were adults, there would be no breach of the criminal law.
	I have no idea whether the Minister has brothers or sisters, but it seems to me that if the Minister turned up and found that the person with whom she was currently having a sexual relationshipher partnerwas having a sexual relationship with a close relative, a court would be entitled to take that factor into account. In such circumstances, it would be an aggravating feature because of the breach of trust.  [Interruption.] I am sorry if the Minister does not understand what I am saying, but I think that I have made myself fairly clear.  [Interruption.] Incest would be a different issue altogether.  [Interruption.] The trouble is that the Minister did not listen to what I said. I was referring to circumstances in which someone is not only sexually unfaithful to his or her partner but sexually unfaithful within the context of that partner's wider family, including close relatives. That can happen without any breach of the criminal law.  [Interruption.] I fear that if the Minister has not understood that by now, even an attempt by me to explain it behind the Speaker's Chair will probably be unsuccessful.

Dominic Grieve: The Minister said, from a sedentary position, that I was not referring to the defendant. Of course I was referring to the defendant. The defendant is the person who has put the defence forward, and if the Minister has not understood that, it is beyond my comprehension.
	Let me move on. The point at issue is this: why should the jury be deprived of the opportunity to take that factor into account? All I can say to the Minister is that it seems to me that the Government's argument is entirely incoherent. They wish to issue a statement, but I think that in doing so they risk grave injustice in a very small minority of cases.
	The second issue that the Minister has not been able to address properly is how a judge will direct a jury in cases in which sexual infidelity is one component of the story, but other components are also involved. How, logically, will juries be able to disregard the sexual infidelity component? It beggars belief that the Minister thinks that that will be easy.
	When I intervened on the Minister, I gave an example which I think is worth repeating. One of the good things that the Government have done in the Bill is to enable people who have been battered and abused for many years to advance the partial defence, even in circumstances in which currently they have been prevented from doing so because they did not act in the immediacy of the violence meted out to them. I welcome thatI think it is an important developmentbut, as I said to the Minister, there will be cases in which the final trigger is the discovery of sexual infidelity in that context. It is beyond my understanding how a jury will be properly directed to put that issue out of their minds, but will be allowed to consider the other issues.

Dominic Grieve: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. Listening to the Minister, I began to think that I must have completely misread the Law Commission's reportyet that is what she told us, and I must tell her that that does not raise my level of confidence that she actually knows what she is talking about.

Dominic Grieve: It is the Minister who is being selective. If she turns the page, she will see the precise exceptionsin sections 3.146 to 3.150which appear to me to undermine everything that she has said. Section 3.150 states:
	Our approach has been to seek to set out broad principles, to rely on the judge to exercise a judgement whether a reasonable jury could regard the case as falling within those principles and then to rely on the jury to exercise its good sense and fairness in applying them.
	Further up the page, the report provides the precise examples that I cited to the Minister.
	Let me return to a point that I made earlier. These are the Law Commission's original proposals. Since then, the Government have cherry-picked those proposals. I understand why they have done so, but, as the Law Commission has made plain, the coherence of its proposals has been entirely undermined by their action. That constitutes a major problem in the way in which the Government have approached the legislation. I think I am correct in saying that for those reasons the Law Commission has indicated to the Governmentand the Minister has not answered my questions since then during the passage of the Billthat it believes that the decision should be left to the jury.

David Winnick: Even if the hon. and learned Gentleman does not accept the Government's view, there are pretty good arguments on both sides, but given the violence that is perpetrated against women and given that far more women than men are murdered as a result of affairs and sexual infidelity, would it not be rightI speak as a layman, not a lawyerfor the House to convey the message that sexual infidelity must not lead to a manslaughter charge, because it constitutes outright murder? After all, we convey messages on all kinds of issues. That would strengthen the opinion held by so many of us that women should be protected against violence and, obviously, should be protected first and foremost against being murdered.

Dominic Grieve: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), but I wish to bring my speech to a close.
	I certainly do not wish to see circumstances in which the House provides an excuse for men to kill women simply because they perceive that the women have been unfaithful to themor, for that matter, vice versa: I do not want to see women killing men. On that I am sure we can all agree. That, however, does not justify the remarkable step that the Government will take if they decide that this is one of the components that can be entirely disregarded by a jury when it comes to consider the plea of provocation and the partial defence. I simply do not understand the logic.
	History suggestscertainly, the cases that I have seen suggestthat although on occasion the defence may be advanced as a mere cover for the violence of one party to another, sexual infidelity is sometimes an important and relevant component of the cocktail of events that combine to make a reasonable person snap. For those reasons, I think it is very dangerous for this House to deprive juries of the opportunity to use their good sense to evaluate that evidence, but I am afraid that that is what the Government have chosen to try to do, and I do not understand the rationale behind that. I am very wary of legislating in a symbolic fashion. Juries are entitled to consider these points and, in my experience, if we allow them to do so, they will come up with the right answers. For those reasons, the Lords amendment deserves to be supported.

David Howarth: First, I agree with what the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) said about this being the first time that the Bill's murder provisions have been considered on the Floor of the House. It is extraordinary that the business was arranged in such a way that we could not discuss these and many other important issues about the law of murder.
	I also associate myself with the hon. and learned Gentleman's remarks on what has happened in respect of the Law Commission. It was given a very narrow remit in the first place, in that it was not allowed to consider the question of a mandatory life sentence for murder; it then produced the best possible report it could in the circumstanceseven though it might not have been what it wanted to do had it been left to its own devicesand then the Government cherry-picked even that. I must say that it is hardly convincing for Members on either side of the debate to cite what the Law Commission said in its reports, as I do not think they reflect in any way what it thinks.
	There are three different kinds of reason on offer in this House and the other place in favour of dropping the sexual infidelity provision the Government originally proposedclause 45(6)(c). I want to make it clear from the start that I do not agree with the major reason given today, which was implicit in what the Lords said, which is that somehow it is all right for men to use sexual infidelity as an excuse for murder. That is unacceptable. However, two other reasons were on offer, and I shall need to talk about them as well.
	Some Members have rightly said that it is a matter of fact that there are cases when men especiallyalthough this can happen the other way aroundkill in a rage about sexual infidelity. The issue is not whether that is a fact, but whether it is an excuse; it is a question of value, not of fact. On the question of value, I am entirely with the Government. I do not agree that that is a proper reason to offer in defence against a charge of murder, especially given that a charge of murder is one where there is a requisite intention to kill. The defendant is therefore saying, Yes, I did have that intent. I had all the requisite intention to murder, so it was not that I did not know what I was doing. I did know what I was doing, but the action arose out of these circumstances. That is an unacceptable excuse.
	I have slightly more sympathy with the second reason raised both here and in the other place, which has to do with the jury. I think the jury does have a place in these cases. I do not think the Government have excluded the jury in the current version of the clause in question either, because they do not say that the judge shall tell the jury how to decide any case where there is sexual infidelity. They simply say that the sexual infidelity is to be disregarded. To whom is that clause addressed? The Government are not entirely clear about that.

David Howarth: One of the most important aspects of the jury system is that the jury gives no reasons, so we never know the answer to such questions.
	I agree with the Government that there is no reason in principle why the legislature should not set the criminal law. It is for Parliament to say what the law should be, and Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that certain excuses should not count. That in itself is not an argument against the Government's position.
	Members seem to have missed the point that this part of the Bill already includes another substantive restriction on what can count as a justifiable lack of control. It is contained in clause 44(4), which says that the loss of control defence does not apply where the defendant
	acted in a considered desire for revenge.
	Revenge is therefore also excluded in the same way. Perhaps a jury will think otherwise, and consider that there should have been such a defence in the circumstances before it. No one has yet complained that that provision should be removed simply because it interferes with the rights of the jury. I am not entirely convinced by the jury point, therefore. The Government are entitled to propose changes in the substantive law, as long as they admit that in the end these questions of fact will, even in their own version, be decided by a jury.
	The third reason was more persuasive. It has been alluded to here, but it was discussed at great length in the other place. It takes us back to the evidence the Law Commission gave to the Public Bill Committee. It is the argument that the drafting of clause 45(6)(c) was defectiveor, to borrow a word used by one commissioner, bizarre. That clause said:
	In determining whether a loss of self control had a qualifying trigger...the fact that a thing done or said constituted sexual infidelity is to be disregarded.
	There is an enormous number of things wrong with that formulation. We do not have time to go through them all, but the first thing that is not at all clear is whether it does the job the Government want it to. What is to be disregarded? Is it sexual infidelity? No, the clause does not actually say that. It is merely the fact that something
	done or said constituted sexual infidelity.
	In other words, the infidelity itself is not to be disregarded, but merely the mental process going through the head of somebody else, who comes to the conclusion that something constitutes sexual infidelitythat is what is to be disregarded. It is not clear that that is what the Government wanted. Secondly, how can a thing that is said constitute sexual infidelity? What words constitute sexual infidelity? I cannot see how that works.
	Thirdly, what counts as sexual infidelity anyway? The Minister's examples show the problem is a difficult one to resolve. She put forward lots of examples of what she claimed was sexual infidelity, although it is not clear whether a jury would agree. What about unmarried couples? What about situations in which the couple disagrees about the degree of fidelity that is expected in their relationship? This takes us back to the point the law commissioners made, which is that presumably what the Government meant was something like sexual jealousy or envy, rather than infidelity as such. There are other ways of drafting the clause that get out of at least some of these problems. I do not say that the amendment we offer solves all the problems, but I think it solves at least some of them.
	On Report, had we been allowed to debate it, we would have offered an even more comprehensive solution that would have separated out the various problems in this entirely unsatisfactory area of the law. One area in which the Bill fails is that it does not distinguish between loss of control through anger and cases of long-term violence where peopleespecially womenfear repetition of the violence. Those are entirely different cases. The second sort of case is not really about loss of control at all, and should be subject to a separate defence. None of our proposals were discussed, and it is not possible at this stage to rewrite the whole of the murder provisionsalthough if that were possible, it should have been done.
	It is possible, however, to offer a cut down version of what we offered on Report, by way of amendment (a). That amendment deliberately ties the issue of sexual infidelity to a specific part of the trigger provisions, namely that the circumstances should be
	of an extremely grave character.
	It ties it down to how the Bill works, rather than being at large which is how the current drafting works. It avoids the constitute problem by concentrating not on the thought processes of the court, but on the actions and intentions, or reasons for action, of the defendant. We hope that it adds more comprehensibility to the sexual infidelity language by referring to sexual jealousy, which is slightly clearer.
	The Minister said that what was wrong with our amendment was that there were circumstances in which the defendant might perceiveshe used the language of the amendmentthat what was going on was sexual infidelity whereas, in reality, it was not, or someone else might think that it was not. That ignores, first, that this is a jury question in the endthat cannot be got away from; this is criminal law, so the jury decides this kind of issue. It also ignores the fact that the amendment starts with the words
	where D acted principally out of a desire.
	The key phrase is acted principally. The jury decides whether someone acted principally out of the various matters referred to in the amendment. The Minister's problem with the subjective nature of perceived does not arise unless the jury thinks that that is the principal reason. No reasonable jury could possible believe that in the circumstances she put forward the principal reason for the action of the killer was sexual infidelityeven the perception of it.
	The objections that the Minister raised do not work. I simply add that whatever the problems with our drafting, they are as nothing compared with the problems in the Government's drafting. Faced with a choice between something slightly imperfect and something plainly bizarre, we should choose the slightly imperfect. Thus, if circumstances arise in which it is possible to vote on amendment (a), I request that we do so.

Douglas Hogg: I think that my right hon. and hon. Friends wish to contribute to the debate, as perhaps do some Labour Members, so I shall be brief and compress my remarks to something shorter than I originally had in mind.
	The law of provocation has always been one of the most difficult aspects of the law of homicide, and over the years it has given rise to a great deal of judicial comment and controversy. Broadly speaking, the recommendations of the Law Commission, which are encompassed in this Bill, are to be welcomed, but there is one exception: the proposal to exclude from the triggering event the conduct entitled sexual infidelity. I am very much with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), who speaks from the Front Bench, in believing that this is essentially a matter for a jury.
	Perhaps the House will forgive me if I recount a case that I dealt with some three or four years agoI was acting for the defendant, who was charged with murder. He was impotent, and he often tried to have sexual relations with his wife and failed because of his impotence. The wife then developed a long-standing sexual relationship with a lover, and that was known to my client. There was then an occasion when my client tried to have sexual intercourse with his wife, but because he was impotent he could not achieve that, at which point the wife began to abuse him, laugh at him and say that he was not a patch on the lover. My client lost self-control and strangled his wife.
	Within that cocktail of events, the sexual infidelity of the wife played a prominent part, but if we are to accept the Government's position, that sexual infidelity would have to be disregarded. I see absolutely no justice in providing in statute law that what was clearly, on the face of it, a relevant fact should be disregarded. My client was convicted of murderthat is to say, the jury in that case determined that the conduct did not amount to provocation within the meaning of the law, and he was convicted of murder. I was very unhappy about that verdict, but that is a wholly different matter. What the case shows is that a jury is perfectly capable of addressing this issue and taking a broad view of what is just.
	The Minister has said that her views were in accord with those of the Law Commission, but that is not so. What is correct is that the Law Commission said in its report that male possessiveness and jealousy should not, of themselves, constitute good cause. It relied, perfectly understandably, on the judgment of Lord Hoffmann in the very important case of Smith (Morgan), when he commented on the Australian case of Stingel. If the Minister were to read further on in the report, to the following pagethis is the point to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield was drawing attentionshe would see that it makes it clear that where additional material comes into play, for example, taunting somebody about their impotence, it is right that consideration of that combination of events should be left to the jury.
	That is why the Law Commission, in its considered view, held against the Minister's position of excluding a particular category of event from the triggering events. If she would be good enoughI am sure she willto examine paragraph 3.168 on page 70, where its detailed recommendations for inclusion in statute law are set out, she will not find a recommendation that sexual infidelity should be excluded from the triggering categories. She will not find it, because that was not the Law Commission's view. Its viewit happens to be my view, toois that these are matters best left to the jury. Very often, the jury will decide that the conduct does not amount to provocation, as in the case I told this House about, but sometimes it will decide that it does. If we exclude that fact from the jury's ability to take account of the matter, we bring about a profound injustice. I believe that the views expressed in the other place are wholly right and that this provision has been addedprobably at the suggestion of the Solicitor-General, who is no longer in her placeout of a desire to be politically right. I do not think it just and this House should not go along with it.

Ann Widdecombe: What I have been totally unconvinced about tonight is why this particular motivation and provocation should uniquely be removed from a jury's discretion in deciding whether or not it was, in the circumstances rehearsed, an understandable ground for somebody losing control. The Minister has said that sexual infidelity cannot be, on its own, a cause for killing, and we would all agree with that. However, the whole point about loss of control is that the person does not make a rational assessment at the time of what he is doing and does not necessarily intend to kill, but is provoked into making an attack. On that basis, just about every single reason for losing control would have to be taken away from a jury's discretion. The Minister has not shown that there is some factor in this one cause of loss of control that justifies its uniquely being taken away from a jury's discretion.
	It is no reason to kill somebody if they get drunk, but let us consider a situation where a man comes home night after night as drunk as an owl. If his wife says to him Don't do it again and then moves towards him, pushes him in her fury at his being drunk as an owl and he falls over, hits his head and dies, she will say, Of course it was not a good enough reason, but I lost control. Why somebodyit could be a man or a woman; it does not have only to be a mancoming home and finding his spouse of x years in bed with somebody else shall not trigger a similar loss of control is beyond me.
	The fact is that one cannot specify what is and is not a reasonable ground for loss of control for the simple reason that nothing ever seems reasonable when one looks at it from the point of view of somebody who is totally in control and rational. It is for a jury to decide the following question: was the provocation in this incidentwhatever that incident may besufficient to cause that person, on the spur of that moment, to kill in that way? That is entirely a matter for the jury to decide. The hon. Lady has not made any case tonight for the argument that, quite uniquely, the one circumstance in which the jury cannot make that assessment should be sexual infidelity.

Jack Straw: I was racking my brains on this, and got a bit of approval from those on the Liberal Democrat Benches who are better versed on this than I am. I think that the right hon. Lady would find that in such circumstancesif, in her delightful phrase, a man was as drunk as an owl and the woman involved just pushed him and he fell, hit his head and diedsince we can infer from what she said that there was no intention to commit either murder or grievous bodily harm, no charge of murder would lie, still less be followed by conviction.

Jack Straw: I understand the right hon. Lady's concerns and this is an inherently difficult issue, but let me say that it is nothing to do with political correctness. To say that is to trivialise this difficult issue. She chose the exampleI did notand in that case no charge of murder would lie and, if there were a charge and that was the totality of the evidence, it would not go to the jury.

Claire Ward: The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has suggested that this is essentially about the Government trying to remove a responsibility from juries simply because juries would find it too difficult to deal with and because it is too difficult for judges to direct juries. I disagree that judges will not be able to direct juries. Judges are perfectly used to directing juries about what they can and cannot considerthey do it every day in court. It is not beyond the ability of judges to tell juries that sexual infidelity cannot be a qualifying trigger for a loss of self-control. If something else is relied on as the qualifying trigger, any sexual infidelity that forms part of the background can be considered but it cannot be the trigger. That is essentially what the legislation seeks to doto stop the act of sexual infidelity being the trigger that enables people to say that these are extremely serious and grave circumstances.

Claire Ward: The partial defence for loss of control exists on the basis that there will be certain sets of triggersthings that take place that cause the loss of control. Sexual infidelity is being disregarded as an acceptable trigger that can play into the loss of self-control. We believe that it is acceptable to do that precisely because we do not think that sexual infidelity, in itself, should be considered an acceptable reason for somebody to have killed their partner, husband, wife or whomever the circumstances might involve. The background information might well form part of the case, but sexual infidelity will not be the trigger for allowing the defence of that partial loss of control.

Claire Ward: I completely disagree with the hon. and learned Gentleman. The judge and indeed juries are quite capable of considering the information that is available to them as background information. We are saying that it is completely unacceptable that sexual infidelity in itself should be used as the trigger to allow the defence of loss of self-control to come into play. That is essentially what this is about, and I am quite surprised that the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) feels that it is appropriateindeed, this featured in the case he discussedfor somebody who has committed sexual infidelity to be told by their killer, or for it to be determined in a court case by their killer, that that is essentially just cause. You have committed sexual infidelity and that is just cause for me to commit murder, is not an acceptable claim.

Douglas Hogg: That is not what I was saying. I was saying that when there is a cocktail of eventsin the case I cited, they included the sexual infidelity that formed the background, together with abuse and taunting of the defendantthe combination is capable of amounting to an appropriate trigger. Incidentally, that is also the view of the Law Commission, and when it took that question out to sampleI think the Minister will find it on page 66 of the report, but I could be wrongthat was also the view of the focus groups to which the question was addressed.

Claire Ward: The right hon. and learned Gentleman and I are clearly not going to agree on the issue, and unfortunately the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and I are not going to agree eitherwhether it is on sets of circumstances, sexual infidelity or drunken owls.
	In the remaining time, I want to deal with some of the other points. The hon. Member for Cambridge referred to the issue of whether sexual infidelity is a thing done, a thing said or both. We have used the words done or said in the provision, to the effect that the fact that a thing done or said constituted sexual infidelity is to be disregarded. By doing so, we are making it clear that the subsection relates back to the earlier subsection, which refers to
	things done or said...which...constituted circumstances of an extremely grave character, and caused
	the defendant
	to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged.
	Although it might be difficult to understand how things said would of themselves amount to sexual infidelityI understand the point that the hon. Member for Cambridge is makingif we were to remove that term we could leave a loophole that might be exploited in the future. For clarity, and to ensure that the provision is seamless, the provision refers to the words in the original subsectionthings said or done.

Claire Ward: In inviting the House to reject the Lords amendments, we are seeking to complete unfinished business from the last Session. The House will recall that we introduced offences of inciting hatred on grounds of sexual orientation in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. During its passage, the other place passed an amendment that inserted what is now section 29JA into the Public Order Act 1986. That section contains a so-called freedom of speech saving
	for the avoidance of doubt.
	Regrettably, for want of time, we were unable to overturn the Lords amendment, but the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) made it clear that when the opportunity arose, we would return to the issue. To this end, a clause in this Bill sought to repeal section 29JA of the 1986 Act. The House approved that clause by a majority of 152 on Report in March. That was the third occasion on which the House has made it clear, by a substantial margin202 on 6 May 2008that there was no need for the freedom of speech saving provision.
	The other place has seen fit to strike out the clause, thereby seeking to retain the unnecessary, unwanted and potentially harmful saving provision. We should send a clear message back to the other place that it is ill conceived, ill judged and ill advised. Furthermore, that has been the settled will of the elected House on three occasions to date.

Dominic Grieve: I have listened carefully to the Minister, and the argument that everything is all right is one to which the House must pay considerable attention. She will be aware that only two weeks ago, under existing law, a case in Norwich gave substantial cause for concern. The right of freedom of expressionthe right of people to express views that might appear unpalatable and with which one might disagreeis being visited not with the reply, I disagree with you, but with a visit from the police. That must be a subject of concern for the Minister, and the fact that it has happened only recently, following the case in Lancashire some years ago, suggests that there is still a real problem. Individuals are finding that they cannot express themselves with views that are certainly not about hatred, but about freedom of expression and conscience.

Evan Harris: I am grateful for what the Minister says, and I hope that she will join me in continuing to point to those who raise valid concerns about the Norfolk and Lancashire cases that the problem is the police's treatment of section 5 of the 1986 Act, which contains an insulting provision. Will she say anything more about her Department's undertaking to review whether she would accept, in some later legislation now, the amendment that I and my colleagues proposed to remove insulting from the offence and raise the threshold in that legislation? It would deal with all the mischief in the examples that other hon. Members have givenrightly in that context, although not in this one.

Claire Ward: I wish to ensure that we deal with the legislation before us. What is before us is an opportunity to make sure that the will of this elected House, which has had an opportunity on three occasions to state that it does not believe that this so-called freedom of expression section is a necessary or wise addition to our legislation. We have got the balance right already.
	We looked at existing models in legislation to decide which way we wished to proceed. The first model is used for race hate offences. In the case of racial hatred, the 1986 Act criminalises threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour that are intended or likely to stir up racial hatreda low threshold. In contrast, the second model, provided by the religious hatred offences, sets a much higher threshold. In that case, an offence is committed only when threatening words or behaviour are used with the intention of stirring up hatred. It is not enough that the words or behaviour are abusive, insulting or merely likely to stir up hatred. We have adopted that model for the offences of stirring up hatred on the ground of sexual orientation.

Gerald Howarth: The Minister refers to the religious hatred provision, but she will be aware that it contained a further protection, which she has not mentioned. That is what we seek in the legislation before usthe same protection as that which is in the religious hatred provision.

Claire Ward: The right hon. Lady says that it is for the avoidance of doubt, but I am quite sure that in other circumstances, perhaps she, and certainly many of her right hon. and hon. Friends, would say that provisions should not be added to Billscreating more legislationsimply for the avoidance of doubt. Indeed, I am well aware that they have criticised it when they have believed that it has happened in the past; yet, on this occasion, they think it acceptable to make an amendment that is simply not needed. Even more than that, it has the potential to do harm. It may well result in the offence not being prosecuted, because somebody believes that they can rely on the provision. I hope that that is not the case.

Ann Widdecombe: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her customary grace in giving way. I have said in this House that I do not believe that homosexual couples should adopt children. No police appeared on my doorstep. When a children's author gave exactly the same opinion on a radio programmeunder questioning; they did not just volunteer itthe police got involved.

Claire Ward: The right hon. Lady is not entitled to express her views on matters only because she is a Member of this House and entitled to parliamentary privilege. Many of the incidents to which she refers come under the Public Order Act 1986, and therefore the threshold is considerably lower than in the Bill. The high threshold in the Bill relates only to threatening words and behaviour intended to stir up hatred. People are perfectly entitled to express their views about homosexuality. Some will find those views distasteful, offensive or even insulting, but there is nothing in these offences that prevents that expression of opinion. Those uttering such threatening words or exhibiting such behaviour intended to stir up hatred should not have the cloak of a so-called freedom of expression clause to protect them. Frankly, I am surprised that so many hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benchesand indeed the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald, who is sitting there on her ownthink that people should be entitled to protection where they have used threatening words that are intended to stir up hatred.

Claire Ward: In order to fall foul of the Bill, the person's words would have to be threatening and their behaviour intended to stir up hatred. If they did intend to stir up hatred, I believe, and the Government believe, that they should be guilty of the offencethat the threshold should have been reached. If the hon. Gentleman does not believe that, he is saying that it is acceptable for people to stir up hatred on the ground of sexual orientation and that that is freedom of speech.

Claire Ward: I think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to find out whether I wish to have a religious and philosophical debate on the holy books. As a Roman Catholic, I can make reference to only one book. The reality is that if somebody uses the words that may be contained in a religious book with a clear intention to stir up hatred, they will fall foul of this offence. Someone may simply express a view that they do not agree with homosexuality or with certain sexual practicesthey can have freedom of speech and expressionbut that is entirely different from taking it to a level where they intend to be threatening and to stir up hatred on the ground of that sexual orientation.

Edward Leigh: Is it not interesting that the Minister never actually discussed Lord Waddington's amendment? We all agree that it is wrong to threaten or stir up hatred, but Lord Waddington's amendment said simply:
	For the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.
	That is all that we are sayingsimply discussing the matter is not threatening behaviour or worse [Interruption.]

Dominic Grieve: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I heard from a sedentary position the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) saying, Not if it is threatening, but the words of itself make it quite plain that if it were threatening language in that context, the freedom of speech defence would not be open to the individual concerned. Therefore, his anxiety is misplaced.
	I say this to the hon. Gentleman, seeing as he is participating in this debate: we have in the past worked together on similar issues regarding religious hatred. One comment that he often made thenindeed, I even remember him conceding in the context of this offencewas that such offences, which the House creates, can have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. He may have been the first person to use the words chilling effect in the House. I certainly remember them coming first from him.
	The fact of the matter is that there is plenty of evidence, unfortunately, in the context of the Public Order Act 1986, that the offence is having a chilling effect. Its interpretation, based upon a form of political correctness handed down by what is perceived to be the line taken by those in authority, is leading to abuse in a number of circumstances by the police who threaten individuals with prosecution unless they desist from expressing perfectly legitimate views. That causes me great concern, but I am glad to say that that has in no case led to prosecution and that in one case it led to the police subsequently providing an apology for their conduct. Nevertheless, we must bear that point in mind, because the Government intendI do not think the Minister disagrees with thisthe offence to be far more serious, although I accept that the test for it may be different, as she said.

Evan Harris: If I catch Mr. Deputy Speaker's eye, I will respond and show how much the hon. and learned Gentleman and I agree on various points. There has, in fact, been a prosecution along the lines that he hoped there would not be. However, how can the words
	discussion or criticism of sexual conduct
	and so on
	shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred
	avoid doubt if what is said in that context is threatening and intends to stir up hatred? It may not be a problem to his forensic mind, but most people out there would see it as totally inconsistent. It is a get-out: as long as a person is threatening and intentionally threatening while discussing sexual conduct, they are okay, but when they discuss other things, they are not.

Dominic Grieve: The way I read the saving clause that Lord Waddington drafted

Dominic Grieve: I must say, it is not only the way I read it, but any sensible person who gives the words their plain English meaning must come to the same conclusion. Clearly, if I make an expression which of itself amounts to no more than a reasoned criticism, it cannot be threatening, but it is perfectly plain from Lord Waddington's amendmentindeed, I have not heard the Government challenge this or suggest otherwisethat if the words constituted threats, anyone standing up in court and saying, Well, I was justified in making the threat because it was just part of a criticism of somebody else's way of life or habits, would not get off the hook. I entirely concur that it would be grossly improper if they did. For those reasons, Lord Waddington's amendment provides considerable comfort to those who happen to have to strong views about how people should conduct themselves, and it does nothing to diminish the ability to prosecute this offence.

Dominic Grieve: I agree with my hon. Friend. The other factor that is worth bearing in mind is that as this debate has gone onthe Minister cannot escape thismore people have come forward to express their concerns about this proposal. They include, in many cases, people who may have different sexual orientations from the majority, but think that the provision is entirely unnecessary to provide them with protection. They have also expressed the view that the saving clause introduced by Lord Waddington is a modest and moderate way to provide reassurance that freedom of expression will be maintained. The Government do not help the cause of reducing bigotry and improper or violent behaviour against people of a different orientation by fettering freedom of expression. That is why this House should be so careful before it embarks on such a course of action, and that is why Lord Waddington has been sensible in trying to find a formula that would provide reasonable reassurance that this provision would not be misusednot just in terms of who eventually gets convicted in court, but above all in terms of who is oppressed by those in authority arguing that they have transgressed by expressing legitimate opinions. The Minister cannot get away from the fact that that is a current problem and has not been concocted out of thin air.

Mark Pritchard: My hon. and learned Friend touches on the important point of precedent, and we have already seen that with the public order legislation. I do not wish to put him on the spot, butgiven his concern about the public order legislation and the crossover with this Billperhaps I shall invite him on to the spot to say what he would do as Justice Secretary should we form the next Government in May.

Dominic Grieve: It is quite plain that the way in which public order legislation has been applied needs to be reviewed. That is something that many hon. Members across the House would agree on, including, I suspect, the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon. That does not necessarily mean that the legislation needs to be altered, but the guidelines certainly need to be reviewed, because there is a continuing failure to understand what the offences that it is intended to deal with are.
	However, I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I bring us back to Lords amendment 59. I wish to bring my remarks to a close, as other Members wish to participate in this debate. We on the Opposition Front Bench will vote to support Lord Waddington's amendment. We believe that it is innocuous, that it provides much-needed reassurance in a difficult area and above allI emphasise this to the Ministerthat it will not prevent the successful prosecution of somebody who intends to incite hatred through threats.

David Taylor: There is indeed a strong sense of dj vu about this debate, given that it is the fourth time that we have discussed the free speech clause. We have also discussed a previous attempted free speech clause, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin) in January 2008. I do not want to add to the sense of dj vu by repeating all the arguments that have been made before, but I want to explain why I think the Government are still wrong on the matter and why I wish they would let the free speech clause remain on the statute book, where it has been for the past 18 months.
	The other place has voted for the clause three times, most recently in July, by 186 votes to 133, giving a majority of 53. I unsuccessfully moved an amendment in this place on 24 March to retain the free speech clause, so I was obviously pleased with the vote in July. I was especially pleased that more and more Back Benchers in the Lords from my party seemed to see the sense in a free speech clause. They either voted for it in greater numbers or abstained. I had hoped that the Government would start to see the sense in the free speech clause too.
	I find it hard to accept that we are again being asked to vote against the free speech clause. I thought that free speech, civil liberties and human rights were exactly the sorts of things that we were supposed to be in favour of. I am sure that they brought my hon. Friend the Minister into the Labour party, among other things, and they certainly did me in North-West Leicestershire. We should say that we support civil liberties. We all quote Voltaire and proclaim our tolerance, but here we have an opportunity to uphold tolerance for people whose views we may not agree with, but who have a right to those views and a right to express them in a reasonable way.
	Before anybody intervenes with a dreadful example of incitement to violence against gay and lesbian people that they claim would be protected by the free speech clause, let me remind hon. Membersfor the third time, and brieflywhat it says:
	for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.
	The clause does not remove any mention of the context of the remarks. We are not talking about protecting foul rap lyrics or violent rants; we are talking about protecting discussion, criticism or the urging of people to modify their conduct. If someone uses threatening words and intends to stir up hatred, that is of course not mere discussion, but discussion with threats and intent to stir up hatred, which falls squarely within the offence, and so it should.
	The free speech clause is irrelevant in one sense. As paragraph 392 of the explanatory notes makes clear, it would not affect
	the threshold required for the offence to be made out.
	The clause would not provide a defence, which is what the Minister implied at one point. It would not narrow or alter the scope of the offence, which is what she tried to say earlier. However, if threats and an intention to stir up hatred are not present, the discussion falls outside the new offence, and the free speech clause simply makes that plain. It is, as it says, for the avoidance of doubt, and would help to protect innocent people from unnecessary and intimidating police investigations.
	We need that protection, because there seems to be quite a lot of doubt, and as a result quite a lot of unnecessary investigations. In fact, people seem to make complaints to the police as a tactic to silence opinions that they do not like. I am sure that hon. Members from all parts of the House would agree that we should deprecate that. That is not what the criminal law is there for, nor is it what the police are there for. We should make that clear when there is doubt.
	Who wants the criminal law to be used to silence discussion or criticism of sexual conduct? Who wants the new homophobia offence to be used against those who merely urge people to modify their conduct or, in religious language, to repent of their sins? There have been countless cases, and several more since we last discussed the matter in the House seven or eight months ago, of exactly that happening.
	Andy Robertson is a street preacher. There is a video of him on YouTube, which hon. Members may watch in their offices before the vote. He comes across as an eminently calm and sensible man, and he has preached in the streets of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire for 10 years with no complaints whatever to the police or civil authorities. Yet police officers were sent in by a council employee to move him on, and told him that describing homosexuality as a sin falls foul of section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. I shall return to that. The preacher had not even mentioned homosexuality, but the police, having failed to move him on by citing irrelevant council byelaws, seemed to seize on unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations of homophobia as a device for shutting him up. If they can do that with section 5 of that Act, which is a general offence covering harassment caused by threats, abuse or insult, who can doubt that they would use the new offence, which specifically covers homosexuality?
	I look forward to hearing the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. He believes that we should remove the word insulting from the section 5 offence. I think he probably has a point, and I hope that the Government will listen to it, but that will not solve the problem of how to stop the new homophobia offence being abused in similar ways. Recent cases have shown that a dangerous attitude to gay rights is prevalent among the police and that makes it important to include the free speech clause.
	Another example with a little more detail is that of Pauline Howe, which is the most recent case to hit the headlines. She is a 67-year-old grandmother who wrote to her council complaining about a gay pride march at which she says she was verbally abused. She used old-fashioned, politically incorrect words and several biblical references, and I doubt whether many of us in the House would have written a letter in those terms. I hope that the Minister is listening to my comments, and not just to Front Bench conversations. Pauline Howe's letter certainly did not merit two officers interrogating her in her living room, and apparently frightening the living daylights out of her, but that is what happened.

David Taylor: I am not a lawyer, but merely a humble accountant, if that is not an oxymoron. I cannot explain that, but we have an eminent lawyer on the Front Benchthe Secretary of Statewho may be able to explain that in an intervention or in some other way.

Mark Pritchard: Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that without protection the Bill could be enforced in areas such as home schooling, when some people bring their children up in a particular faith, whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian or another faith? [ Interruption. ] The Minister may think that that is nonsense, but I am reflecting some of my constituents' concerns, and I am entitled to do so. If she has something to say, she should say it from the Dispatch Box or from the Back Benches and not from a sedentary position. The point is serious. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is concern that the provision could be extended to home schooling, and that people in their own homes could be restrained from teaching their children in a particular faith course?

David Taylor: There is a risk of thatI am not sure that there is any evidence that it is happening yetdepending on the atmosphere within which the police interpret the new legislation, and the pressures to which they will no doubt be subjected.
	Pauline Howe has been the subject of a considerable public outcry, and her freedom of speech has been defended by people across the political and philosophical spectrum. I am sure that Ministers have heard or know of Ben Summerskill of Stonewall, who said that the police response in her case was disproportionate, although I do not know where he stands on free speech. One minute he is giving evidence to Parliament that he does not mind having a free speech clause in the homophobia offence, but the next minute he is campaigning against it. However, he said that the police response to Pauline Howe was disproportionate, and I agree, but in 2007 he said that he was shocked that the police allowed Christians to demonstrate outside Parliament against the sexual orientation regulations. We rightly allow all sorts of demonstrations, some of them pretty unpleasant, outside this place, and I do not think that a few hundred hymn-singing Christians should be deprived of the democratic rights that the rest of the population enjoy. Mr. Summerskill might not be the most reliable guide on the subject of free speech.
	We were told in the debate in the other placeand, by inference, this eveningthat the Waddington clause says nothing about free speech and that we should therefore not retain it. That is a silly, specious argument. Just because something does not contain the term free speech does not mean that it does not protect free speech. We legislate in all kinds of ways to protect free speech without putting the actual term into the text. The Waddington clause protects free speech by defining a range of moderate expressionsdiscussion, criticism and urgingthat already fall outside the offence, and by drawing them to the attention of the police and prosecutors. It is therefore signposted.

Mark Durkan: My hon. Friend has given a number of examplesalbeit from different legislationto support his concerns. Has he heard any examples from the Minister, or from anyone else in the Government, of how the existing provision on free speech has either confounded or frustrated the basic intent of the current legislation?

David Taylor: No, I have not. We have not heard any convincing arguments at all. We have seen some smoke and mirrors, and some hand-waving, but we have heard no evidence.
	The Minister said tonightI paraphrase slightlythat the clause has no effect and that we can therefore dispense with it. It is true that it does not change the threshold of the offence, but that is not the same as saying that it has no effect. It provides a signpost to police and prosecutors that they must leave innocent people alone if all they have done is discuss or criticise sexual conduct. There is plenty of evidence that there is a real problem with the police's handling of these cases, and the effect of the clause will be to tackle that problem.
	The Minister also said a moment ago that bad people would try to hide their actions behind the clause. I can say, even as a non-lawyer, that they would not have much luck. The explanatory notes make it clear that the clause does not affect the threshold of the offence. If someone breaches the threshold of the offence, the free speech provision will do them no good whatever. I believe that the Minister is demonstrating what psychologists call cognitive dissonance, in that she is holding two mutually conflicting opinions at the same time. She is struggling with the tussle that they are causing in her brain. The free speech clause either achieves nothing or it allows bad people to get away with things that they would otherwise not get away withshe cannot have it both ways. It is either one or the other. It is a binary, black or white, zero or one, yes or no. There is no middle way that the Minister, as part of the new Labour intake into this place, would like to see.
	Nasty people who are facing prosecution will always cast about looking for a way to get off. They often falsely cite the Human Rights Act 1998, but I do not think that any hon. Members believe that that is a reason to repeal that Act. Similarly, the fact that people will falsely, and unsuccessfully, cite the free speech clause is not a reason to repeal it. We are told that use of the phrase of itself might mean that people can ignore the context of the remarks. That argument did not make any sense to me when the Lib Dems last raised it, and it still does not. I recall that the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) dealt with it fairly deftly at that time, although he did not get the chance to do so again tonight. I do not believe that it strips the context from the remarks that have been made.
	We are also told that we can deal with the cases that we are worried about by amending section 5 of the Public Order Act. The Government are apparently consulting on section 5; perhaps the Minister will confirm where we are on that. Perhaps changes will be recommended, but that is not the offence we are dealing with here. We are dealing with the homophobic hatred offence. If a general offence, such as section 5, can be used against people for expressing views on homosexuality, it is inevitable that an offence that specifically deals with homosexuality will be used even more often. So we must pay special attention to the need to protect free speech in this area.
	There is a lot of public sympathy for these victims of police heavy-handedness in the area of gay rights, and I think that people would like to see us make provision to try to stop this sort of trampling on people's civil liberties. The free speech clause does nothing whatever to reduce the level of protection that the Governmentquite rightly, and with widespread supportaim to give to gay people.
	The Government admit that the clause does not affect the threshold of the offence; it cannot therefore be used to defend actions that fall within the ambit of the offence. It does not remotely affect any of the other criminal offences that can be used to target those who perpetrate or encourage acts of violence towards any members of our society or to target words that cause harassment, alarm or distress. We should find the guilty and prosecute themwho would not endorse that sentiment?but we should not catch the innocent in the crossfire of that approach.
	The free speech clause does no harm whatever; it does only good. If we remove this free speech clause, we send out the message that we are quite happy to take a risk with the freedom of people like Andy Robertson and Pauline Howe. I, for one, am not prepared to take that risk: I will vote against the Government and I urge other hon. Members to do exactly the same.

Evan Harris: It is good to be back on this subject. I always predicate my remarks on these issues with the words of the late and greatly missed Linda Smith, who said. I'm not religious; I get on with everyone. I doubt whether that could apply to me, but it is fair to say that I have a record of protecting free speech. That is true in respect of religious hatredas the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) will remember, we worked together on curtailing what would have been an overly broad offence. I have also worked on proposing the repeal of blasphemy, on opposing the criminalisation of the so-called glorification of terrorism, on calling for libel law reform and, indeed, on proposing an amendment to get rid of the insulting provisions in section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which we were not able to debate during the passage of this Bill through the House because of the use, yet again, of a preposterous undemocratic programme motion, which denied us the opportunity to provide due scrutiny to Government legislation. I should add that owing to yet another programme motion that has not been consulted onat least not with Liberal Democrat Membersthe provision passed in the other place to repeal seditious libel and criminal libel is one that once again we cannot debate. I hope the House will therefore accept that I have a record of supporting free speech.
	I want to make it very clear that I support free speech for homophobes. I believe that people who are homophobicthat will include some religious people who may not necessarily intend any offence, but they are perceived as homophobic by some peopleshould have the right to free speech without great restriction, albeit within certain limits. It is a good thing that we are discussing homosexuality in the context of free speech rather than the rights and wrongs of homosexuality. I think that that is a sign of how things have progressed during my time in the House.
	I have to say to supporters of the Waddington amendment, however, that they are promoting the wrong amendment. If they want to tackle the existing mischief and the future mischief of over-policing of comments that might be taken to be homophobic, they have to ensure that our law does not criminalise insulting speech, whether intentional or not, that is short of threateningor, in the case of directly causing harassment, distress and alarm to someone, something that is short of abusive. While insulting exists in the Public Order Act, inserting this provision into it will, with or without the Waddington amendment, still make people feel that they cannot insult people on the basis of sexual orientation and will still make the police believeperhaps the police should think much more carefully about this, but the insulting provision is on the statute bookthat they have to investigate complaints, particularly given the fact that people feel that the police should take seriously complaints about incitement to hatred or insulting behaviour on the grounds of race, sexual orientation or religion. I thus urge the House to recognise that in a sense we are debating the wrong amendment. I will come on in a few moments to the right amendment to remove the insulting provisions from the statute book, but it has been put to this Housealthough not debatedand is supported by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Ann Widdecombe: What the hon. Gentleman says may be true, and the menace may be section 5 of the Public Order Act, but it is not before us tonight, it is not for amendment, and there is no immediate proposal by the Government to amend it. We must therefore use what is at our disposal to try to guarantee free speech. Given the circumstances that we are inrather than those he wishes us to be inhe should support this amendment.

Evan Harris: I am an eternal optimist, and I believe that we should aim for the right legislation, not create the wrong legislation on the way to getting the right legislation. My hon. Friends and I will support the Government in the Lobby tonight, and I suspect that there will be another large majority in favour of deleting the provision, so the matter will go back to the House of Lords. However, their lordships should apply themselves to the specific legislation where the problem lies.
	Let me set out the reasons for the position taken by the Liberal Democrats. As the Minister said, the incitement to racial hatred provision currently has a low threshold. However, the religious hatred provision rightly has a much higher thresholdit was important that that was restricted to threatening language, and that intentional was a requisite part of the offence. Given the importance of being able to proselytise freely, or to criticise religion, there should be a broad free speech saving that was not about religious conduct or practice but about the arenas in which speech would take place, such as those of political discourse, comedy, performance or broadcast. Clearly, that would not be in the nature of language that was threatening and intended to incite hatred such as when talking to a bunch of skinheads in a pub. The measure that we agreed for religious hatred is therefore the right one.
	In relation to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, the Government have done what is essential: they have ensured that the measure deals with threatening only, and intentional language only. I can think of no pastor or street preacher who is so extreme that they would seek to incite hatred and use threatening language. They might do one or the other, but it is hard to imagine a preacher who would do both. I do not necessarily have good views of religious extremists, but I cannot think of one who is likely to do that. Some religious extremists incite violence directly, and that is already an offence, but they do not go the roundabout way of intending to stir up hatred using threatening language; they usually talk about measures that incite violence directly. No example has been given of the sort of religious speech that would be covered, without the so-called saving. The saving is unnecessary to protect religious speech.
	However, there is a real danger out there of extremist political parties using threatening language about sexual orientation that is intended to stir up hatred, without otherwise breaching another part of the statute. Again, let us imagine the British National party saying something homophobic in the context of paedophilia, which is, of course, a myth about homosexuality. However, if it is inciting, and if it uses the words, And they've got it coming to them, that adds the threat, and that is the real mischief. We know how child abuse is sometimes dealt with in the popular press, and how that can create the sort of mob mentality that is the execution of the incitement of hatred. That would rightly be caught by the offence.

Evan Harris: This offence has not existed for long while the free speech saving clause has been in place, so I do not think that there has been an issue in that regard. What we must deal with is the existing mischief, rather than hypothetical situations. There is a real threat of incitement to homophobic hatred by extremist political parties, as opposed to the religious. The example that I gave would not currently constitute an offence because it does not directly incite violence, but incites hatred and involves the use of threatening language. Until we have this law, there was no provision to deal with incitement to hatred on grounds of sexual orientation.
	Let me turn to the so-called Waddington amendment. I do not doubt the sincerity of Members who support it, but I note that its sponsors in the Lords were not very keen on free speech when it came to the repeal of the blasphemy laws, and generally have not been defenders of free speech when it comes to terrorism law. There is clearly a lobby in favour of extra provisions for free speech in one area, the area of sexual orientation, but we must take that on its merits. What concerns me about that amendment is that its wording creates confusion.
	Let me give the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) an example, because he invited me to do so. The amendment states that the
	criticism of sexual... practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.
	Does that mean that if some extremist group, probably political rather than religious, says, These gays should keep their dirty practices away from our children or they will get what is coming to them, that would be covered by the clause? They might think, rightly or wrongly, that because they were restricting their language to criticism of practicesand it is clearly critical of a sexual practiceand urging people to refrain from such practices, albeit in an outrageous and distorted way, they would benefit from the protection of the clause. They might say that their language should not of itself be taken to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred, although it clearly is threatening and does stir up hatred.
	I think it is a bit too late for the hon. and learned Gentleman to get out his law books after the damage has been done, and to say, No, actually they do not benefit from the saving clause, but I should be grateful if he could address the issue.

Dominic Grieve: I do not think they would benefit from the saving clause, because their language would be threatening. That is clear from the expression, They will get what is coming to them. I do not think that, given those circumstances, that is a valid criticism of the operation of the saving clause. It is, of course, right to saywe have debated this in the pastthat incitement to hatred should not be construed as the same as expressing a dislike of something, including quite an intense dislike. There is a dividing line between the two, and in my experience courts, and indeed police officers, ought to have no difficulty in telling the one from the other.

Mark Durkan: Will the hon. Gentleman not agree that the example he has given is of people not talking about the actual sexual practices of homosexuals, but alleging criminal behaviour and the threat of criminal activitywhich he has rightly said they are not involved in, because he said that paedophilia is a completely misdirected accusation that comes from people of prejudice against people of homosexuality? Therefore, by the hon. Gentleman's own explanation, this is not of itself a discussion of their sexual practices.

Evan Harris: What matters is whether the mob stirred up thinks it is, because that is what causes the damage. It is not for the court to decide whether it is a reasonable statement. The court has to decide whether it stirs up hatred, whether it was intended to stir up hatred and whether the language was threatening; and after the damage has been done it is too late for Members to come back and say, Well, the saving clause wasn't really intended to cover this, and on a narrow argument. It looks as though it does give a let-out; and it is not an offence to accuse other persons unnamed of criminal offenceswe do that all the timeso there is no alternative prosecution.

Evan Harris: I do not accept that that is clear, but I also feel strongly that whether or not that is the case, it is not apparent to people reading the statute what the saving clause does and does not allow; that is simply not clear. To put the words
	for the avoidance of doubt
	in front of the provision does not make it any clearer. In fact, it makes it seem that it should be obvious, and when it is not obvious, one is puzzled.
	Finally, I want to move on to the alternative way of dealing with this. There have been occasionsincluding all the examples that have been given, such as the Lancashire and Norfolk cases, Iqbal Sacranie and Lynette Burrowswhen the people concerned have been questioned by the police. That must stop. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has made it very clear in its considerations of this matter that it is time for the insulting provision to be removed from the Public Order Act. It said that in the policing and protest inquiry, which was in the seventh report of 2007-08, and it said it in its eighth report, on this Bill.
	It is welcome that the Government are looking at this. However, I hope the Minister will be able to say in winding up that they have stopped looking and are now going to start doing, because I do not think there is opposition to this anywhere in the House. The police may object, because they want the ability to start questioning anyone who insults anyone else short of being threatening or abusive, but that is not good enough.
	If the Government are serious about protecting free speech, they have to deal with this, because there has been a prosecution. The case of Hammond  v. DPP involved
	an elderly street preacher who preached in the centre of Bournemouth on a Saturday afternoon while holding a large sign with the words: 'Stop Immorality', 'Stop Homosexuality', 'Stop Lesbianism' and 'Jesus is Lord'. A hostile crowd of some 30 to 40 people had formed, some of whom reacted violently by assaulting Mr. Hammond. After his refusal to desist from preaching, and following substantial debate among themselves...the police decided to arrest Hammond rather than his opponents and he was duly convicted of displaying an 'insulting' sign causing 'alarm or distress'...contrary to section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.
	The divisional court upheld the conviction, despite a human rights claim. That means we cannot rely even on article 10 of the convention. We need to get rid of this statute. I understand that, unfortunately, the gentleman died before he was able to take his appeal further. I think that even if just one person is treated like this, it is unacceptable.

Evan Harris: I do not think that any of these people would be prosecuted under the law before us, but they clearly remain at risk of being investigated, and potentially prosecuted and convicted, under section 5 of the Public Order Act. The Minister could do us all a favour by helping those of us who want to help the Government by saying something substantive on that point. I think that she and her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will accept that it has been raised by me on several occasions. It is the real problem. Her doing so would unite  The Guardian and  Daily Mail, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and menothing else that I can think of does thatas well as solving her problem in the other place. I urge her to say something on that, so that we get the right law and the right amendment passed. Otherwise, I urge the House to support the Government in this matter.

Ann Widdecombe: First, may I say to the Minister that neither she nor her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, or any Minister involved in this law, has the smallest appreciation of how threatened people out there feel when it comes to the exercise of free speech? One of the most common phrases that we hear now, on a wide range of topics, not just this one, is Of course, you can't say that these days. Normally, it is said to indicate that the person has a view but is afraid, under current state orthodoxy, to express it.
	Interestingly, when we last debated this particular amendment from the other placeI hope that the other place insists on it, as it has done in the pastmany of the same examples were cited, although the most recent Norfolk one was obviously not available then. The Minister at the timenot this one, I hasten to addstood at that Dispatch Box and told us categorically, Of course, this was unreasonable. None of that police action should have taken place. Let us forget for a moment which particular law it took place under. She said that it was all due to misplaced interpretation and all that would be cleared up by guidance.
	Several incidents have taken place in which police action has resulted in very severe criticism, including from Ministers. Despite that, despite the publicity given to it and despite the Government apparently distancing themselves from that sort of action, recently there was an exact repeat of the problem in the case of the 67-year-old pensioner from Norfolk. In other words, not all the guidance that is being issued is stopping this particular menace. It may be that the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) is right when he says that the most satisfactory way of addressing this problem would be through section 5 of the Public Order Act, but that Act is not before us tonight. It is not promised to be before us in the near future or even in the distant future, long after this Government have ceased to existit is not promised to be before us at all. Thus we must act with the tools that we have got.
	The amendment offers some very necessary reassurance to people who seriously believe at the moment that their freedom of expression is restricted and that it is now possiblewe have seen from those examples that indeed it isthat the police will arrive on their doorstep not because of something that they have done, but for an opinion that they have expressed. That properly belongs to totalitarian states; it should not belong to free countries. It should never be a feature of a free country that if one writes to a council to express a view on somethinganything at allit should result in the police arriving on the doorstep.
	The amendment seeks to reinstate a clause that simply, for the avoidance of doubt, endeavours to put on the face of the legislation freedom of conscience and freedom of the expression of religious and other views. When such a provision was last opposed by the Government, the entire argumentit is all there in  Hansardwas based on its being unnecessary. If it was merely unnecessary, there would not be such movement tonight to remove it, and so now the Minister has changed the position. Now, it is not so much that it is unnecessary, but that it might produce the sort of behaviour that we are trying to curtail.
	The ground has shifted, but there needs to be protection for ordinary Britons from having the police on their doorsteps, as happened to the Lancashire couple, to the children's author Lynette Burrows, to Iqbal Sacranie himselfno preacher, said the hon. Lady, is in any danger, but what is Iqbal Sacranie if he is not a religious leader and preacher?and lately of course in the Norfolk case. There has to be a signal from us that enough is enough; that guidance will not suffice, because it has not sufficed; and that condemnation from this House and from those on the Government Front Bench does not suffice, because it has not sufficed. We must make it explicit that there is freedom of opinion, freedom of conscience, freedom of religious belief and, above all, freedom of the ability to express any of them.

Claire Ward: This has been an interesting debate. However hard I try to make it absolutely clear to the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and, indeed, to my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), who has shifted his place

Claire Ward: Indeed, he is capable of doing so.
	It is easily possible to outline both the existing provisions and the reasons that make the measure unnecessary. It is not necessary to put on the face of the Bill that freedom of expression should be protected. We do not legislate for that in a range of other areas where we believe that we all have a right to express our views, and in this instance we need not do it because the Attorney-General, who would have to consider any prosecution, has a duty to take into account the convention rights under the Human Rights Act 1998

Ann Widdecombe: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, but the point has almost passed. She was referring to the unlikelihood of a prosecution. We are seeking to avoid the likelihood of even the earliest stages of an investigation for a mere expression of opinionin other words, the police on the doorstep.

Claire Ward: I perfectly appreciate what the right hon. Lady is saying, but we heard misconceptions about how the offence might be used.
	It has been said that without a freedom of expression provision, the offence will have a chilling effect and may prevent people from proselytising against homosexuality or from expressing their distaste for certain sexual practices. It has been alleged that the offence would prevent people from preaching religious doctrine. It has even been suggestedby the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard)that somehow it will fetter the ability of people who want to home-school or to bring up their children in a particular faith.
	The offence does not do that. If parents or home educators wish to teach their children, for example, that homosexuality is wrong or that certain sexual practices are wrong or unacceptable, or if they wish to be insulting about such practices or about homosexuality, it would not be covered by the offence, which is simply about threatening words that are intended to stir up hatred. The right hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman have simply not understood or accepted the high threshold level in the clause. Let me repeat that the offence can bite only when the words or behaviour are threatening and intended to stir up hatred against a group of people on the grounds of sexual orientation.
	Evangelical preaching against homosexuality or portraying gay characters in comedy sketches could only be caught up if it was done in a threatening way, intended to stir up hatred. Any words or behaviour that fall into that category should rightly be caught by the law. If the hon. Gentleman or the right hon. Lady are suggesting that they should not be, clearly they are suggesting that it is acceptable to incite hatred against homosexuals. I do not believe that is what the right hon. Lady is saying, but if that is not what she is saying, she needs to give credit to the assurances from the Dispatch Box that the offence is not about criminalising people who simply preach or proselytise their religious or moral values if they do not intend to stir up hatred by doing so.

Dominic Grieve: Quite apart from the fact that the Minister's remarks are rather offensive in terms of the views of Members on the Opposition Benches, I have absolutely no doubt that section 5 of the Public Order Act was not intended to be applied in the way it has been applied. I have no doubt that if the provision had been debated in the House exactly the same assurances would have been given. The fact of the matter is that the legislation that is being enacted has the capacity to be misusedI do not have the slightest doubt about thatwhich is the very reason why we thought it was sensible of Lord Waddington to include a saving clause that ensured that did not happen. What can possibly be wrong with that?

Claire Ward: I have already explained that it is completely unnecessary to provide such a clause. We do not provide saving clauses or freedom of expression clauses on a range of other forms of offence, where it is not necessary. It is not something that we would advocate. It is simply wrong to imply that the offence could cover anything else, as some Members have suggested this evening.
	Freedom of expression or saving clauses imply that there is room for doubt and make the position less clear. The police and prosecutors, and indeed the public, need clarity and certainty about the scope of the criminal law, and the offence as it stands, without the saving provision in section 29JA of the Public Order Act, creates uncertainty. It clouds the issue and it should be removed.
	Many Members have made reference this evening to the concerns that have been expressed about purported incidents of over-zealous policing

Several hon. Members: rose

Evan Harris: I am grateful to the Minister for re-confirming what the Government said in response to the Joint Committee on the matter. I welcome that, as far as it goes, but can she give any indication of a time scale for any legislation that might flow from that review? In other words, if there is a criminal justice Bill in the next Queen's Speechas sure as night follows day, there will bewould such a measure be in time to be included in that Bill?

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment 59 disagreed to.
	 Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order; this day)
	 The Speaker put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83F).
	 Lords amendment s 119 , 121, 236 and 239 disagreed to. 
	After Clause 103
	 Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 66. (Bridget Prentice.)
	 The House divided: Ayes 290, Noes 67.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment 66 disagreed to.
	 Government amendment (a) made in lieu of Lords amendment 66.
	 Lords amendments 3 to 54, 56 to 58, 60 to 65, 67 to 118, 120, 122 to 215, 217 to 235, 237, 238 and 240 to 244 agreed to , with Commons privileges waived in respect of Lords amendments 12, 14, 28, 54, 131, 145, 149, 150 and 185 .
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83H), That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendments 1, 2, 55, 59, 119, 121, 216, 236 and 239;
	That Mr. Bellingham, Mr. Mike Hall, David Howarth, Helen Jones and Bridget Prentice be members of the Committee;
	That Bridget Prentice be the Chairman of the Committee;
	That three be the quorum of the Committee.
	That the Committee do withdraw immediately. (Mary Creagh.)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Committee  to  withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and communicated to the Lords.

Ordered,
	That
	(1) at the sittings on Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 November, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until any Message from the Lords has been received and any Committee to draw up Reasons which has been appointed at that sitting has reported; and
	(2) at the sitting on Thursday 12 November, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House, if a Message from the Lords Commissioners is expected, until that Message has been received .( Mary Creagh .)

That the draft Private Security Industry Act 2001 (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 21 July, be approved. (  Mary Creagh.)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118 (6)),

That the draft Private Security Industry Act 2001 (Amendments to Schedule 2) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 12 October, be approved .(  Mary Creagh .)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118 (6)),

That the draft Scottish and Northern Ireland Banknote Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 13 October, be approved .(  Mary Creagh .)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118 (6)),

That this House authorises the Secretary of State to undertake to pay, and to pay by way of financial assistance under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982, in respect of the UK Innovation Fund, sums exceeding 10 million and up to a cumulative total of 150 million. (  Mary Creagh.)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118 (6)),

That this House authorises the Secretary of State to undertake to pay, and to pay by way of financial assistance under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982, in respect of the Car Scrappage Scheme, an additional sum of up to 100 million .( Mary Creagh .)
	 Question agreed to.

Ordered,
	That Mr Kenneth Clarke be discharged from the Joint Committee on Tax Law Rewrite Bills and Mr David Gauke be added .(Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Ordered,
	That Sammy Wilson be discharged from the Transport Committee and Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson be added .(Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Ordered,
	That David Simpson be discharged from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and Mr Nigel Dodds be added .(Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. (Mary Creagh.)

Charles Walker: Thank you for calling me this evening for the Adjournment debate, Mr. Speaker. It is a great honour for me to speak tonight on mental health.
	Earlier today, I visited a unit delivering mental health services to my constituents in Hertfordshire. It was a fantastic and enlightening visit. I met a wonderful lady called Sally Pegrum, a nurse who has been in the NHS for 34 years delivering services to mental health sufferers. She trained at 17 and became a mental health nurse at 18. She is still only in her early 50s, so I hope that we will have another eight years of her excellent service.
	I asked Sally what changes she had seen in her 34 years of service, and she said that the delivery of mental health services to the most ill in our society has changed out of all recognition. That is a credit to previous Governments and to this Government. When she started 34 years ago, she worked in an institutionand in those days, they were institutionswhere she discovered a woman in her 70s who had been there for 60 years for committing the crime of having a child out of wedlock in her early teens. This is recent historyit was not the turn of the century but 34 years ago. Let me start by saying, then, that things have moved a long way in the past 34 years.
	I fully support the idea behind keeping ill people in the community and in intermediate care wherever possible. We have crisis resolution teams working towards that aim. The truth is, however, that the reality of crisis resolution teams does not always match the ambition we have set for them. Such teams are often overworked. They have very large case loads, which makes it difficult for the professionals comprising them to give mental health patients the attention they deserve.
	There is often a shortage of intermediate and crisis housing, so even if we want to keep mental health patients in the community or near their homes, there are not the facilities to do so. I fully appreciate that efforts are being made to bring this up to speed, but at the moment, those facilities do not exist in many places.
	More worryingly or as worryingly, emergency telephone numbers that are meant to operate 24 hours a day are often not manned in the evenings and at the weekend. If someone is having a mental health crisis, it does not always happen in business hours or during weekdays. We need these telephone lines to be staffed 24 hours a day to meet the cries for help. It is also the case that before being admitted to an acute unit with beds, mental health patients are expected to get assessed by these crisis teams, but in 50 per cent. of cases that is not happening. Again, we need to address this flaw in the system.
	My final plea is on behalf of carers of people who are mentally ill. I have met many carers who look after people who are extremely ill, and without their help the full burden would fall on the NHS and the taxpayer. We, as a civilised society, need to look after the mental and physical health of these carers, and we need to ensure that they get excellent respite care, so that they can continue their excellent work on behalf of those whom they love.
	I also accept that we are closing beds for the best of reasons, but the truth is that for every three beds that close in hospital wards that do not deal with mental health, six close in mental health wards. I am not going to stand here tonight and argue that mental health wards are particularly nice places to be. In truth, many are not and in fact I have never met anyone who looks forward to going into hospital. Mental health wards are important, however, and they do fulfil a need.
	There are problems with existing mental health wards, as I have touched on. About 20 per cent. of patients feel physically threatened in them, while a further 50 per cent. feel threatened at times. A mental health ward is three times more likely to be assessed as being unsatisfactory than a ward treating people with heart disease or cancer, for example. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) knows, such wards are too often located a long way from people's homes.

Julian Lewis: I know a cue when I hear one. Not for the first time, my hon. Friend makes a remarkably eloquent case on the plight of the mentally ill. I was delighted that the brand-new Woodhaven hospital was built and opened in the past few years in my constituency. One reason why its acute ward is not a threatening place to be is that it has alongside it a psychiatric intensive care unit, so that if people get into a threatening state, they can be looked after thereexcept for the fact that that unit has been temporarily closed and might never reopen. Does my hon. Friend agree that to lose a psychiatric intensive care unit, which functions as a complement to an acute ward, is to make things worse not only for the people in need of the intensive care beds, but for those who need to go from the acute ward, at short notice, into intensive care, and who will now be sent, as he says, a long way away?

Charles Walker: My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. It is no coincidence that today I visited a PICUas they are calledan outstanding facility that aids the recovery of some of the illest in our society. I wish my hon. Friend the best of luck in his campaign, and I hope that the primary care trust reconsiders its position. Hertfordshire has an excellent, brand-new facility, which aids recovery.
	I am not in favour of keeping acute wards open for the sake of it. However, we must accept that there is a danger of closing wards before the facilities are available in the community to pick up the slack and the patient load. The truth is that in most acute wards, occupancy rarely stands at 85 per cent. In most cases, it is far nearer 100 per cent., averaging 98 to 99 per cent., and can go as high as 125 per cent. when one counts people on leave who are trying to rehabilitate themselves into the community at an intermediate stage, but with the option of a bed remaining open if they have a crisis during that process.
	As I am sure the Minister is aware, the pressure on such beds creates problems. When a higher threshold for admittance applies, such acute beds have a higher concentration of seriously ill patients. Staff numbers do not always reflect that situation. The overall number of patients might be the same, but their health needs are far greater because the admittance threshold is raised. Therefore, more staff need to be in place, because too often they feel that they are managing patients, as opposed to treating and making them better, which is what mental health staff want to do.
	I mentioned the issue of leave: many patients leave acute mental hospitals to have a couple of days in an intermediate setting to help them to integrate back into their community. However, many patients are frightened to go on leave because they fear that if they have a crisis they will never get back into hospital, as the demand for their bed becomes so pressing while they are on leave that it is given up. Psychiatrists report anecdotally a greater pressure to discharge patients early, which results in far higher rates of readmission. AlsoI hope the Minister does not think that I am arguing against myselfbed blocking can occur, because the patient is at a stage at which they can be moved on, but the intermediate services between them and the community are not in place to take them on board. I notice my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East getting restless, and I will allow him to intervene again.

Julian Lewis: I promise that this will be my last intervention. I had not intended to make it, but as my hon. Friend has referred to rehabilitation in intermediate stages, I must draw attention to the fact that Crowlin housea state-of-the-art rehabilitation centre in Totton, in my constituencyis threatened with closure. It has been reprieved for the moment because no places have been found for residents to be sent in the meantime, but once again, exactly the scenario that my hon. Friend is describing in theory is developing in practice in my Hampshire constituency.

Charles Walker: As the Minister knows, such intermediate services are critical. The closure of wards works only when there are good intermediate services that ease patients' return to the community.
	One of my concerns about the additional pressure being placed on acute wards relates to staff turnover. If staff no longer feel that they are in control of the situationif they feel under intolerable pressurethey are tempted to move on, and many staff who are experienced in hospital settings are now moving to crisis management teams. That is no bad thing, because they bring their experience with them, but we need equality of service. We need excellent people in the community, but we need excellent people in our hospitals as well.
	I never thought that in my parliamentary career, I would talk about a balanced score cardit sounds very exciting and newbut I think we need one in this instance. When we are, rightly, closing hospital beds and reducing a hospital ward's capacity from 22 to 16, as is suggested by best practice, we should have that balanced score card. We should ensure, before the closures happen, that there are community facilities to take the increased load that will be moved back into the community. We should ensure that we have the intermediate beds, the safe houses and the respite care for carers that will make the transition work. We in this place want to be confident that the system works. We want to be confident that our constituents are being given the very best care, and that applies across the House this evening.
	I have been speaking for 13 minutes, so I will start to wind up my speech. Being mentally ill is not a punishment. If someone has cancer or heart disease, that is not a punishment, but too often being mentally ill becomes a punishment, and it should not. We should show the same warmth and compassion to people with mental illness as we show to people with any other disease.
	It is not going to happen, but if I were Prime Minister this would be my manifesto. We want appropriate, well-resourced community services: the very best services possible, which meet the needs of our constituents, help them to get well, and give them the reassurance they need that the community is ready to embrace them. We need acute beds in modern buildings that promote wellness and recovery. My local trust, Hertfordshire mental health trust, makes no bones about the fact that its acute wards need to be made a lot better. I visited the PICU today, and it is fantastically modern. It aids recovery, and we must ensure that our hospital beds aid recovery.
	We need wards that are safe and clean. The mentally ill do not deserve second best. There should be the same focus on cleanliness in mental health wards as there is in any other ward. We also need wards that are age and sex-appropriate. I know that the Minister has personally made enormous strides during his tenure in ensuring that children do not end up on adult mental health wards. Nevertheless, about 400 children a year do end up on adult mental health wards, and as we all know, that number is too high and must be reduced. We also need to ensure that we do not have mixed-sex mental health wards. Again, we need to ensure that patients feel safe and secure.
	Finally, we need to ensure that mental health staff are properly rewarded and motivated. I want an NHS that is full of Sally Pegrums. I want an NHS full of people who have given 30-plus years to something that they love. Working with the mentally ill means working in is a hugely difficult environment, and it is hugely demanding. Sally has been assaulted verbally and physically on a number of occasions, but she still cares passionately about her patients because she knows that they are ill. We need to reward such people, not just with gratitude but by ensuring that the job allows them to earn a living.
	This is not a party political issue. Regardless of which party wins the next general election, mental health must be at the top of the list. It has been at the back of the queue for far too long. Successive Governments have brought it forward, and this Government have done very good thingsI do not deny thatbut we need to make sure that it remains at the top of the list and pushes to the head of the queue. We face difficult financial times in the years ahead. NHS budgets will come under pressure, but too often the first budget to come under pressure is the mental health budget. In future, it must be the last to come under pressure.
	I would like to thank the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I would also like to thank Rethink and Mind for briefing me this evening, and Hertfordshire Viewpoint and the Hertfordshire mental health trust. I thank the Minister, too, with whom I have had a great relationship during his time as Minister with responsibility for mental health. I may not face him across this Chamber again, and in case he does not return to this place after the next election, I would like to say that he has made a fantastic contribution to the cause of mental health, and I hope that if he leaves this place he will continue to give that area the benefit of his expertise. I thank him for everything he has done.

Phil Hope: I congratulate the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) on securing the debate. I know that he has a very keen interest in this issue, stretching back to the work he did on the Mental Health Bill Committee two years ago. I also thank him very much for his extraordinarily generous remarks. If he were to sit on my side of the House, I would have no doubt he could be an excellent candidate for the highest ministerial office in the land, but we will see how things progress in the years to come; I shall watch his career with interest.
	Mental health was once a forgotten service, which was poorly funded, highly reactive and focused on institutionalised care to support only those with the most severe illnesses. There were welcome, if rather flawed, attempts to transfer more mental health services into the community throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but it was the national service framework, established by the Government 10 years ago, that really moved mental health into a different place. It did this by expanding community services and developing a more proactive, preventive and personalised approach to treating people with severe mental illness.
	As a result of the framework, and the 2 billion real-terms increase in mental health spending since 2002there have been nine consecutive years of increased spendingwe now have 67 per cent. more consultant psychiatrists, 79 per cent. more clinical psychologists and at least 23 per cent. more mental health nurses than in 1997. Crisis resolution and home treatment teams, and assertive outreach workers and early intervention teams are now helping more people with serious mental illness to manage their condition in the community.
	I would also like to place on record my thanks to the carers, whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned in his remarks. The carers strategy, which we published last year, placed extra resources in primary care trust baseline budgets. I have recently met carers' organisations, which are keen to make sure that that money is spent in the community on services such as respite care for those people who are doing such an important and invaluable job in helping to deliver support and care in the community.
	The improving access to psychological therapies programme has increased access to talking therapies to more people with lower level mental health needs, again helping to address problems before they escalate. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and the nurse to whom he referred, that mental health services have changed beyond all recognition. That verdict of improvement has also been reached by the World Health Organisation. It has said that England now has some of the best mental health services in Europe. We want to maintain those high standards and keep mental health services at the forefront of a preventive NHS.
	Even with stronger prevention, about one in 10 of those who receive specialist mental health care each year are admitted as in-patients, so the hon. Gentleman is right to say that in-patient facilities remain an important part of the jigsaw of services. He gave an excellent description of the unit that he visited, and I join him in his comments. The hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) also described excellent work by staff in these units, which are a key part of the mental health landscape. I am committed to continuing to raise standards and to improving the facilities available for in-patients into the future.
	The hon. Member for Broxbourne will know that since 2006 the Government have put 130 million into improving those psychiatric in-patient facilitiesthese PICUsand acute in-patient wards. He may be interested to learnhe made a specific reference to thisthat about 30 million of that money is being used specifically to improve safety for women in-patients. That sits alongside our broader efforts to eliminate mixed-sex accommodation in these facilities and to ensure that every patient's dignity is fully respected.
	I am pleased to say that we know that patients think highly of the care that they receive in these units. Earlier this year, a Care Quality Commission survey of more than 7,000 recent in-patients found that nearly three quarters rated their care as good or better. That is a strong vote of confidence in the quality of acute services, but the question that the hon. Gentleman has really raised before the House tonight has been that of capacity: are there are enough in-patient beds to meet demand? I shall now address that key question.
	The essential point is that not everyone needs care in a psychiatric bed, even in an emergency. Admitting someone to hospital when they are in crisis is a decision that nobody takes lightly. As the hon. Gentleman knows, a judgment has to be made on whether hospital admission is the only way to get a person the treatment they need at that moment to avoid the risk of harm to themselves or others. I have indicated, as he has done, that there are now strong alternatives to in-patient care, including community mental health teams, new models of practice, more robust care pathways, and supported accommodation or respite care in ordinary settings. I am pleased, as I am sure he is, that we are reducing demand for in-patient psychiatric care. For example, there were some 118,000 episodes of treatment last year for people who would otherwise have been admitted to hospital.
	So although the national picture is one of falling mental health bed numbers, occupancy ratesI heard what the hon. Gentleman had to say about those and I understand the point he is makinghave remained steady over several years, which indicates provision against demand is on an even keel. I understand, of course, that in a particular locality these decisions, which are a matter for the local primary care trust and health trust providers, are a matter for local balance and local decision making. The balance between in-patient services, intermediate settings and community services is a matter for local determination. That has to be based on those local health organisations' determinations, on the basis of their consideration of what is needed locally and what units are available locally. We have had a debate in Westminster Hall on the particular issues that the hon. Member for New Forest, East mentioned. I know that he has met his local trust representatives, and that the hon. Member for Broxbourne has done the same, to examine in detail the local situation.

Julian Lewis: rose

Phil Hope: I do not want to repeat the debate that we had in another Adjournment debate on another occasion. The truth is that these PICU beds are assessed on the local needs by the trust and the clinical leaders of that trust. It must be for local determination to achieve the balance between acute beds, community services and intermediate services. The important thing is that there needs to be spare capacity to cater for acute admissions, as and when they arisethat point was made by the hon. Member for Broxbourne.
	The truth is that we are simply getting better at treating people effectively in the community. That is what people say they prefer, and what experts say provides better long-term outcomes for them. This is something to celebrate, not criticisenot that I believe that the hon. Gentleman was doing so.
	There will always be people who need to be admitted, so we have to arrive at the right blend of community and in-patient services. I want to counter any impression that might be left that the decline in bed numbers, which we welcome, has meant that some patients were being forced out of in-patient units before they were ready. Let me say this straight off: just as admitting someone is subject to very careful scrutiny, so is discharging them back into the community.
	Decisions about discharge are always made on clinical grounds, after full discussion with the patient and taking into account any community support that can be offered. So, decisions are not driven by bed numbers or targets; the safety of the patient is the only concern. However, as the hon. Gentleman has said, the debate is a little more complex than in-patient care versus community-based care. There is not such a clear divide. Community services frequently work hand-in-hand with in-patient units to give patients intensive support after their discharge. The introduction of supervised community treatment in the Mental Health Act 2007 gives clinicians added reassurance that if someone disengages from their treatment or from services, or if their condition deteriorates, they can immediately be recalled and treated as an in-patient.
	I believe that the hon. Gentleman has not changed his view from what he said two years ago when we discussed the Mental Health Bill. He said that we needed to care about the welfare of people who are mentally illhe has repeated that this evening and about alleviating their troubles and ensuring that they are treated in ways that best meet their needs as ill people and as patients. That was an enlightened view two years ago; he has repeated it this evening and I know that he stands by it.
	As community services improve and we can offer more support outside the hospital, then the need for in-patient provision will change. It is only right then to review the size and location of that provision and achieve the right balance between in-patient and community services to meet local needs. That is what is happening in many parts of the country. As we have heard, discussions are under way on what may seem on the surface to be difficult, perhaps controversial, decisions. We need to have a sensible debate, as we have had tonight. We do not want to go backwards or to scare people, but we need to talk openly about the issues.
	On the question of mental health services in Hertfordshire, we know that the Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has over the past six months reduced its average bed occupancy by improving its crisis resolution services. I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said about staffing and the demand for such services, and the trust is now working with commissioners to look at other alternatives to in-patient care, including an acute day treatment unit, crisis beds and host family arrangements. It has assured the strategic health authority that pilots will take place before it reduces any bed numbersin effect, it will double run community and in-patient services until it is confident that no patients will lose out from a reduction in bed numbers. In conclusion, mental health services must continue to evolve and continue to improve if we want to give more people the best chance of recovery. The sun is setting on the national service framework but we can look forward to an even brighter future for mental health services through a new programme of work called New Horizons. We are considering more than 1,000 consultation responses on our new mental health strategy, which will deepen our commitment to preventing mental illness and to treating people in the home and in the community as much as possible.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.